The word adoption is not looked in the right sphere in India. We tend to treat both the adoptee and the adopter in a different way. Adoption is basically a process where the child(adoptee) is taken complete care by the adopter as their own. But what state does the child grow up with his/her adopted parents? How does the adoptee face the society? And why the adoption rate is low in India? Let’s have a comparative study as to why adoption rate is decreasing in India? According to the recent survey, India is the second most populated country in the world with 1,405,993,616 as of June13,2022 by the latest UN data. And we have more than millions of children in our country. And recent survey states that there are 3,559 children were placed for adoption in India with families living in India and abroad(2020-2021survey). According to the survey there are 28,000 registered parents for adopting but every year hardly 2200 kids are being adopted what about the remaining children? There are thousands of children left for adoption. Many are in Child Care Institution (CCI), many in small-small orphanages etc. As of 2020,2,27,518 children were living in CCI. We have CARA (Central Adoption Resources Authority) this is developed and managed under the Government of India.So, this authority takes care of all the adoption process in India and in abroad. But are they well connected with all the adoption agency and orphanage home in India?
Mostly single parents tend to adopt children and they mostly prefer adopting kids at smaller age most likely less than 5. The other age groups children are hardly adopted. From my view I felt that there is a mistake both in government and society. Usually in India for adoption they register in CARA for the adoption. Some succeed in it and find a perfect child for them but in some cases it is not. There are cases where even after registration they don’t get any news regarding adoption and it gets hard to contact them. Since they drag it for a long time many loses interest and they lose all hopes for adoption. So here it is the government mistake they should have assigned proper staff and kept track of all registration and should have made themselves available for all the adopters need. And with all this research we can observe that they don’t have proper connection with all the adoption agency or orphanages across the country. So, from my perspective these mistakes by the government are few of the reasons as to why there is decrease in adoption rate over the years in our country. And from society view the people themselves does not have a good thought about adoption. This is one of the main reasons which affects a child mentally in his/her growth. As the adoptees face the world many might look down at them especially at school, they might get teased or bullied which will make the growing child to isolate themselves from the world and they will never expose themselves to anyone. This will affect them mentally and emotionally. From my perspective the society must not treat the adoptees or the adopters any differently from others. They should treat them equally and get along with them so that the adoptees won’t feel left out. These are small thing that will help the child’s mental growth.
In India we have lots of laws and acts that is about adoption and the process and procedure of it . We have the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956.So this act basically deals with Hindus in adoption process. This act talks about all the procedure and legal ways for adoption. We have the Juvenile Justice Act,2015. This was passed by the government for the care and protection of children. We would have heard a lot about gang rape, kidnapping, human trafficking around 2011-2019. There were so many cases in India and many victims were kids. Small children were being kidnapped small girl child were raped, so to stop all this evil act the government came up with an act especially for the protection of kids and children that is Juvenile Justice. Around July 2018 there was almost 630adoption pending cases so there was a new amendment that the district court has to deal with all adoption cases and not the civil court (The Juvenile Justice(Care and Protection for Children) Amendment Act,2021).So this is the new step the government has taken to increase the adoption rate. Since in our country adoption procedure and process will be depending on the adopter’s religion and our country is known for secularism. We have laws and procedure for Hindus but when it comes to Muslims, they lack Uniform Civil Code on adoption. So, if the governments improvise the law many childless parents can get a child easily through adoption.
We have recent case the Supreme court issued a notice to the Centre on petition filed by the NGO. According to this case every year there is hardly 4000 adoption in our country but there are thousands of children in orphanages and thousands of children who are begging in road, many are thrown away by their parents because of family issues approximately there must be 3 crore orphan children in our country but the adoption rate is too less. There are several families who are ready for adoption. The SC also gave some suggestion to assign few trained staff to handle this issue and to decrease the compliancy of adoption. And to see the adoption rate in developed countries like America around 140,000children are adopted by the American families each year. Over 400,000 children are there in foster care. The rate of adoption is comparatively higher than in India. We have the ‘Child welfare Information gateway’ they are an adoption agency we also have a website assigned by the government AdoptUSKids.org this site shares details about the kids waiting for adoption and what type of adopter they need. We can see how organized and systematic the adoption process is in US compared to India.
We have famous landmark case Shabnam Hashmivs Union of India, AIR 2014 SC. So this case basically deals with Muslim women who want to adopt but as we all know Muslims, Christians and Parsi don’t have any adoption act so they follow Guardians and Wards Act, 1980. So in this case she adopted a small girl and filed a petition stating a person with any religion can adopt since there is no act for Muslim adoption three judges of Supreme Court took this case under Juvenile Justice act, 2000 and also CARA. And according to Supreme Court the JJ Act doesn’t talk in specific about adoption but it talks about uniform civil code. But this is a fundamental right so they said adoption can be done by any person in any religion.
I like to conclude by stating ‘The world may not change if you adopt a child, but for that child their world will change’. Every child has a right to live their life, have a right to have a family. The adoptees should be loved they deserve to be loved they have a voice to speak out they should not isolate themselves. They have a purpose and at last they deserve happiness and family love. The Society should change their point of view about Adoption and accept them and treat them equally. And the government should take more measures to increase the adoption rate so all the single families might get a child and a single child can also get a beautiful family.
References:
- http://cara.nic.in
- https://www.thehindu.com
- https://blog.ipleaders.in
- https://adoptionnetwork.com
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org
- https://americanadoptions.com
- https://www.adoptuskids.org
- https://www.childwelfare.gov
- https://www.legalserviceindia.com
- https://www.momjunction.com
- https://scroll.in
- https://www.lawnn.com
