Every year, thousands of children are abandoned due to poverty, stigma, or social pressures. These children are often found in hospitals, public places, or worse, left in unsafe conditions.
What this session covered
This session examined the rehabilitation of abandoned children in India through the lens of one family's adoption experience. Following opening remarks by the institute's president on the circumstances that lead to children being abandoned — poverty, stigma and social pressure — and on adoption as an alternative to mere survival in institutions, the moderator held a conversation with a single guest: a development-sector professional of some twenty-five years' standing who, with her husband, adopted a daughter, then about two years old, in March 2024, having earlier had a biological son.
The speaker described the adoption pathway in practical terms: registration on a central online portal, documentation and home-study assessments by an assigned agency, and a wait she said can run to about three and a half years — in her family's case more than four, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She drew attention to a structural paradox: although India has very large numbers of orphaned and abandoned children, only a small fraction live in institutional care and a smaller fraction still are legally free for adoption, so prospective parents outnumber adoptable children; she put annual adoptions through the central authority at around 3,500 to 4,000. She also outlined the safeguards that lengthen the process — medical examination on admission, police efforts to trace parents or relatives, and mandatory waiting periods before a child can be declared legally free — and argued that foster care, open to children above six years old, remains almost unknown in India despite offering family life to children who cannot yet be adopted.
On the regulatory framework, the conversation covered eligibility restrictions, including the bar on single men adopting girls, the minimum 25-year age gap between parent and child, and a ceiling on a couple's combined age; the speaker considered some of these rules protective in intent but questioned others as unduly restrictive, noting that older children are the hardest to place. She judged the centralised system broadly well designed but uneven in practice, depending heavily on the quality of the social workers assigned, and advised prospective adoptive parents to seek out families who have already adopted and to be open with the child and the wider community about the adoption. She described her daughter's integration into the family as smooth, and the session closed with the moderator commending adoption as a humanitarian act.
Key points raised
- Prospective adoptive parents in India outnumber legally adoptable children; the speaker cited around 3,500 to 4,000 adoptions a year through the central adoption authority.
- The legal pipeline is deliberately slow: medical checks, police tracing of relatives and mandatory waiting periods mean many abandoned children spend years in institutions before becoming legally free for adoption, and older children are the hardest to place.
- Adoption waits can reach about three and a half years; the speaker's family waited more than four, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Foster care, available for children above six years old, is little known in India despite offering family life to children who are not legally adoptable.
- The speaker judged the centralised system broadly sound but uneven in practice, with the assigned social worker's quality making a decisive difference to the applicant's experience.
- Her advice to prospective adoptive parents: connect with families who have already adopted, prepare for the child's integration carefully, and be open with the child and the wider community about the adoption.
