New Delhi, May 31
Soon foreign couples wishing to adopt Indian children will have to do so as lawful parents of the child to be adopted and not merely as its guardians, which has been the case until now.

In a significant move to secure interests of Indian children given in adoption abroad, the government is revising inter-country adoption guidelines to make these more stringent.

New guidelines will mandate full and final adoption of children in India before they are sent abroad with prospective parents. The change was awaited since 2006 when inter-country adoption guidelines were first notified. Adoptions are otherwise being monitored since 1990 by the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) that was established as an autonomous body to clear inter-nation adoption requests.

The practice so far has been to allow foreigners to adopt Indian children as guardians under the Guardians and Wards Act (GAWA), 1890, take them abroad and legally adopt them as per the laws of their land. Not until the said legal formality is completed in the recipient country does the adopted child become a citizen there or enjoy rights a biological child of the prospective parents in question would have enjoyed.

Past experience shows legal processes are not always honoured. Follow-up of adopted children who go abroad also remains a huge challenge given the volume of such adoptions - estimated over 100 a year. In the 11 adoption agencies of Delhi alone, 243 foreign couples were on the waiting list as of June, 2009.

HAQ, a Delhi-based child rights body, has even documented cases of children trafficked abroad on the pretext of adoption. They never really got citizenship rights and ended up as domestic servants. “There are even more disturbing stories of how disabled children are being adopted by foreigners and eventually abused. Since Indian parents don’t want disabled kids, the latter end up unsafe in foreign lands,” Bharti Ali of HAQ told The Tribune.

All this will hopefully change with the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) framing fresh guidelines to mandate final adoption of Indian children under the existing laws in India - the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956, and the Juvenile Justice (JJ) 
Act, 2006.

“Under the revised guidelines, foreign couples will not be allowed to adopt Indian children under the GAWA, which only ensures guardianship and not citizenship. Under the HAMA and the JJ Act, all adoption procedures would have to be completed in India. This means a child who goes abroad as an adopted child will enter the recipient nation as its citizen,” said Anu Singh, secretary, CARA.

Once notified, the guidelines would ensure adopted Indian children full citizenship rights in all 75 countries (including India) that have ratified the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoptions. Among them is the USA, the UK and Australia, where most Indian children land up in adoption.

Singh admitted though the CARA had a provision of following up on adopted children for two years through Indian missions abroad, a revision of adoption guidelines would eliminate any possibility of a child’s vulnerability right in the beginning. The guidelines, after being vetted by an expert committee CARA set up for the purpose last November, will be approved by the Ministries of Women and Child Development and Law.

The step is welcome, but it leaves one gap. “What about children of religions not covered under the HAMA which deals only with Hindus?” Bharti Ali asks. HAQ and other groups want a comprehensive adoption law for India to ensure coverage for every abandoned child, irrespective of his religion. The government is obviously not on the same page as activists. “I can’t comment on the question of law. That’s a policy matter,” Anu Singh says.