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COVER STORY: ADOPTION
Savithri's Modus Operandi
Savithri was once known as "Murgi"
for the manner in which she fretted at the loss of a hen while living
in the Nampally area of the city in the 1960s. She started the Kokila
Home in the 1970s in Tandur, where her father worked in the Railways.
Somewhere along the way the heart that ached for the loss of a bird inured
itself to human feelings. As her adoption business grew Savithri made
several trips to the US, acquired a green card and even got her two daughters
married there.
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| MATERNAL INSTINCT:
Savithri (circled) loved babies for their commercial value |
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Representatives of foreign adoptive agencies
established contact with the Bethany Home, which had a licence from the
Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), the body that oversees adoptions
in India. Savithri's agents and midwives scoured the tandas in Mahbubnagar,
Ranga Reddy, Medak and Nalgonda districts in Andhra Pradesh and Gulbarga
to spot pregnant Lambadas. They struck deals and even delivered the babies
to Savithri's home hours after their birth. Two midwives, Parvatibai and
Gouribai, were arrested by the Karnataka Police recently. Brokers talked
the parents into parting with their children for sums ranging between
Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000. Savithri paid successful brokers Rs 5,000-10,000
but charged the adoptive parents between $2,000 and $5,000 (Rs 2.3 lakh).
Indian families paid up to Rs 3 lakh. The sum was described as a "processing
fee" for preparing documents and greasing palms to pry the all-important
no-objection certificate out of family courts. Plausible, given the country's
bewildering adoption procedures.
Savithri maintained contacts with local politicians.
So confident was she of escaping the law that she did not maintain correct
and updated records. And just in case there were snoopers around, Savithri
kept four dogs at Bethany. She manipulated records to show children had
been immunised long after they had died due to neglect. In fact, this
allowed her to use the papers for another child with the same name.
Lambada girls, because they are fair complexioned,
are coveted. The tribals are easy prey as they believe that the third,
sixth or the ninth child to be born, if a girl, is inauspicious. "We
do not give away a daughter if she happens to be the first or second born,"
asserts Bhimi Bai of Pedda Tanda in Gulbarga. It is an assertion that
is as coldly pragmatic as Savithri's calculator.
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UNREPENTANT: Sanjeeva Rao was arrested once before but refused
to a learn lesson
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Last year, 706 children (96 boys, 610 girls)
were brought to seven placement organisations in Andhra Pradesh, of whom
455 were successfully placed for adoption, 302 with Indian families and
153 with overseas foster parents. Licensed placement agencies source children
directly from the countryside. At times, they bank on other orphanages
and homes-which find it hard to resist the temptation of making money.
In Hyderabad, the Radha Kishan Home, from where six children were moved
to Shishu Vihar, and Precious Moments- run by Anita Sen, wife of an IPS
officer-from where 54 children were taken, have ties with former state
minister Roda Mistry's Indian Council of Social Welfare, one of the four
authorised placement agencies in Andhra Pradesh.
"The raids are giving everybody in the
business a bad name," fumes Mistry. Yet she has no convincing answer
to why authorised agencies play postman for others in getting certificates
for the transfer of children. And no one seems to have an answer as to
why the state Government remained silent for two years after the 1999
rescue of 180 children from ASD and the Good Samaritan Home. The government
order of April 18 to regulate movement of children from nursing homes
and hospitals came only after news trickled in that Savithri had fled
the coop.
Fortunately, the decision to make it mandatory
for all nursing homes and hospitals to record births and deaths and to
admit abandoned children in specified homes may act as a deterrent. As
will a directive requiring officials to register every abandoned child
and upload their details on a website, apanganwadi.com. "A stock
taking of all agencies and a review of the procedures is overdue,"
feels state Director for Women and Child Welfare Shalini Mishra. The directorate
will set up an adoption cell that will be authorised to issue licences
and monitor the child placement agencies. A separate board will supervise
local orphanages.
One should also perhaps peek over the shoulder
at the tandas, for a portion of the mess lies in the wretched condition
of the Lambadas. "The practice of dowry has replaced voli or bride
price," says Bhukya Bhangya, a Lambada himself and history lecturer
at Hyderabad's Nizam College. Traditionally, young men paid a bride price
of seven bullocks and Rs 116-1,116 for girls. Now the tables have turned.
"Parents have to pay a dowry of Rs 40,000 for a jobless youth and
at least Rs 1 lakh for a clerk," says Bhangya. You could call it
seed capital for the most dehumanising trade of all-adoption.
—With A. Rammohan Rao, Stephen David and Natasha Israni
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