Adapting adopting

Governments across the world took steps in recent decades to make adoption a simpler process. Unfortunately,parents wanting to adopt and children in orphanages continue to languish in the absence of each other,owing largely to the bureaucracy of adoption. It is time to take a hard look at the intricacies of and complaints about adoption in India.

The establishment of the Central Adoption Resource Authority CARA was to make adoption easier. The Laxmi Kant Pandey case,26 years ago,was the instant the Supreme Court framed the rules protecting the rights of adoptable children. Now,a PIL filed by an adoption agency has taken both CARA and the women and child development ministry to task for their alleged apathy and corruption that has made the adoption process a farce,whereby opaque state-run childrens homes and criminals exploit children and parents. Adoption,the PIL alleges,has been reduced to a commercial transaction.

Steering clear of the particular petition,it can nevertheless be said that adopting parents are not a happy lot not until they finally bring the child home. What they undergo to secure that is usually not a happy story. The SC has demanded an explanation from the ministry and CARA. Something as delicate and personal as adopting a child is never helped by an overly bureaucratic system. Recently,the government launched the Central Adoption Resource and Guidance System to facilitate adoption with an online database. Such right-headed technological efforts aimed at providing technical ease to a very complex process can always be compromised by old-style corruption and red-tapism. Therefore,a review of the adoption process is needed,with the ever-consistent aim of making it as easy as possible for prospective parents to adopt children.