Children as chattel

Child adoption rackets keep coming to light every now and then. And the Governments adopt band-aid solutions, writes Kalpana Sharma with inputs from K.V.S. Madhav in Hyderabad and Ramya Kannan in Chennai.

BABIES BURIED in orphanages, infants near death in others, hundreds of children crowded into small rooms, girls bought and sold in the name of adoption. The adoption scandal in Andhra Pradesh should come as no surprise to the State Government or the Central Adoption and Resource Agency (CARA). For what was revealed last week was a re-enactment of similar events that had taken place in the 1980s and then again as recently as 1999. Clearly, the solutions that the State Government or the Centre resorted to in the past were mere band-aids, ineffective in dealing with the gaping wounds of maldevelopment and desperate poverty that make people sell their children.

In 1999, the child adoption racket came to light when Mr. S. Peter Subbiah was found literally buying and selling babies. His Good Samaritan Evangelical Social Welfare Association had been established just six months before his illegal activities were exposed. Mr. Subbiah had successfully got permission from the Centre to run the adoption agency. For all accounts and purposes, his home was well-equipped with one ayah appointed for every three children. The real story, however, was very different. His arrest on March 26, 1999, and that of his partner in crime in Chennai, revealed that he was buying babies from Lambada tribals for Rs. 2,000-5000 and selling them for $2,500 upwards to foreigners.

In fact in 1999, apart from Andhra Pradesh, similar stories emerged from Tamil Nadu. In Salem, the police had arrested five persons, three of them women, on complaints of stealing children from a hospital. One woman of the team would pose as the relative of a woman who had delivered a baby and smuggle the infant out. In this way, four babies were sold to a middleman for Rs. 1,000 each. He later sold them for Rs. 30,000 to the Malaysian Social Service, an organisation based in Chennai. Its license was cancelled following this episode. But it continues to exist.

The story should have ended with such revelations. But it did not, at least not in Andhra Pradesh. In Tamil Nadu, child rights activists insist that the situation has improved and is not as bad as in Andhra Pradesh. However, Ms. Girija Kumarababu, a consultant with the Indian Council for Child Welfare, Tamil Nadu, admits, ``Trafficking of children from Tamil Nadu does happen, but these children are sold either for labour or prostitution, not as babies.'' Whether this is any better is, of course, a moot point.

But the scandalous aspect of the developments in Andhra Pradesh is the fact that two years after the exposure of infant trafficking, the same Mr. Subbiah has reappeared. Similarly, Mr. N. Sanjeeva Rao, of Action for Social Development, which was indicted in 1999, was on the scene again this year running a home for children. Both had managed to get stay orders from the court on the cancellation of their licences.

The inefficiency, or deliberate neglect, of the authorities is one side of the story. The other, which fuels the market, is the desperate desire of many couples in the west to adopt children. There are literally scores of sites on the Internet where you can find out how to adopt a child from India. And it is not cheap to do so.

For adoption agencies in India, inter-country adoption is clearly much more attractive because of the large sums allowed. According to the statistics maintained by CARA, between January 2000 and March 2001, 1,377 Indian babies were adopted outside India, of whom over a third went to the U.S. These are the official figures. The scandal in Andhra Pradesh suggests that there are many more that go through unofficial channels. And yet, Indian couples wanting to adopt continue to wait for babies. Just in Hyderabad, at the Government-run orphanage, there is a waiting list of 57.

The saddest aspect of this tragedy is the fact that parents can sell their children, mainly girls, for as little as Rs. 500. Ms. V. Rukmini Rao from Gramya, an organisation working with the Lambada tribals in Nalgonda district, says the solution has to consist of long-term development inputs which are absent in these areas. The Lambadas are landless tribals who live in scattered hamlets.

In places just 60 km away from Hyderabad, there are Lambada ``tandas'' (hamlets) with no water or electricity. The area is arid and unable to support sustained farming. As a result, there is large-scale migration during the dry months. What little work people could get in the past, through Government-sponsored road works, has now stopped as under a World Bank financed infrastructure project, roads in Andhra Pradesh are rapidly being widened and improved with the use of heavy machinery.

In many parts of Nalgonda district, there is a high incidence of fluorosis. The absence of adequate health facilities increases morbidity and mortality amongst the people. And literacy efforts are practically non-existent despite the abysmal literacy rates, particularly among women.

Apart from the stark reality of an existence without water, without work, and therefore with very little food, Lambada society has been infected by some of the worst social customs of mainstream Hindu society - dowry included. In earlier days, families paid a bride price. Today they have to pay dowry. As a result, they prefer to sell their daughters, rather than raise them.

The State Government has responded to the scandal by issuing a Government order prohibiting biological parents from ``relinquishing'' their children to orphanages on grounds of poverty. In the past, it was this provision that was exploited by agencies who kept nominal records of parents who had given up their children. Closer scrutiny revealed that the addresses and names of the so-called parents were fictitious. In any case, most of the poor people who sell their babies rarely deal directly with the agencies. It is middlemen who go to villages, procure the babies and then sell them in Hyderabad, or in Chennai.

Also belatedly, the State Government has laid down guidelines and set up a board to give certificates of recognition to adoption agencies. But there is practically no check kept on orphanages. As recent events have revealed, these are no better than holding centres for registered adoption agencies to pick up children. Also, in the past, agencies like Mr. Subbiah's managed to get themselves registered. So how will the situation be any different another two years down the line? Ms. Rao argues that the steps the Government has taken will merely push the problem underground. There could be more instances of female infanticide. ``You cannot legislate away a social problem,'' she says.

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