This is the reason why Indians adopt more girls than boys

Data provided by CARA reveals that more girls were put up for adoption in the last two years

New Delhi: It was touted as a sign of changing social mores. In May this year, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), under the Maneka Gandhi-led Ministry of Women and Child Development, claimed that since 2012, nearly 60 per cent of those adopted across the country were girl children.

CARA CEO, Lt. Col. Deepak Kumar, even went on record to say that this had nothing to do with more girls being given away for adoption. He instead asserted that Indian couples were “preferring” girls.

But ThePrint has now found that there is more to it than growing progressive mindsets among Indians who want to be parents, at least in the last two years. CARA, in an RTI response, has said that 60 per cent of the children registered for adoption in the last two years have been girls.

Just more girls up for adoption

According to the response, there were 4,170 children available for adoption in 2017-18 — 2,547 girls and 1,623 boys.

Of these, 3,846 children were adopted, while 324 were not. Even if these 324 children were all girls, it would still mean that more girls were adopted.

It is a similar case for 2016-17 when, according to the RTI, 4,130 children were available for adoption — 2,466 girls and 1,664 boys.

Of these children, 3,788 were adopted and 342 were not. Again, even if these 342 children were all girls, it would still mean that more girls were adopted.

CARA refused to provide details for the previous years in the RTI response.

A clear change in people’s attitude: Kumar

Despite the numbers, CARA CEO Kumar continues to insist that there is a change in attitude, basing it on what couples write, he says, as their preference.

“I can’t conjecture about why more girls come to CARA for adoption. But there is a clear change in people’s attitudes. We see this in the preferences that (prospective) parents give while registering,” Kumar told ThePrint.

“If 10,000 people want to adopt boys, there are 15,000 who want to adopt girls,” he said. “The registration is a more accurate indication of people’s preferences than the availability of children,” he added.

Girls still ‘unwanted’

The data accessed by ThePrint, however, is in line with a recent finding of the Economic Survey, released earlier this year. According to the survey, there are as many as 21 million “unwanted” girls — girls whose parents wanted a son, and not a daughter — in India.

The shocking statistic was arrived at by studying the sex ratio of the last child (SRLC), which continues to be heavily skewed in favour of the male child.

“There may be a few cases in which parents have two or three daughters, and they abandon the third because they want a son,” said a CARA official on the condition of anonymity. “But this is the case only in rural pockets. In the rest of the country, there is no perceptible bias against the girl child,” the official said.

Child rights activists argue that it is the obvious reason behind more girls being available for adoption, and subsequently more girls being adopted.

“It is well known that more girls are abandoned than boys,” said Enakshi Ganguly, the founder and co-director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. “The preference for a son remains the norm in India. So I am not surprised that your RTI response shows more girls are available for adoption,” she said.

“At the moment all CARA cares about is numbers – increasing adoptions… It is really very worrying. If they get pushed on targets, it will only increase trafficking of more girls,” she added.

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