Half a life: Abandoned, adopted, abandoned
Manisha (name changed) is 15 and brighteyed . She might be the regular teenager . The adults in contact with her say she is
polite and disciplined and is always ready to help anyone in trouble. But Manisha is not a regular teenager and hers is no
ordinary story. She lives in a home run by an NGO in Gurgaon for abandoned or abused children or those with special needs.
She is the helpless victim of inter-country adoption gone terribly wrong.
Six years ago, Manisha was adopted by an American family from a centre in Mumbai. But soon enough, they were unwilling to
keep her, blaming Manisha’s newly apparent hyperactivity, mood disorders and depression. Rejected and abandoned all over
again, Manisha was sent across the seas and has been in the children’s shelter from early 2010.
Should it be this way? Almost all her young life, Manisha has been a victim of the system — and all its faults. In 2003, she and
her sister were found abandoned at Mumbai railway station. Both children were placed with an NGO, the Family Welfare Centre
(FWC), by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). In 2005, the CWC declared that the children could be adopted because no one
had come forward to claim them.
Soon enough, an American couple expressed interest in taking both sisters. The FWC, coordinating with an adoption agency in
US, completed the formalities. The girls were cleared for adoption in April 2006 by the Central Adoption and Resources
Agency (CARA), the nodal body for adoption under the Union ministry of women and child development .
But within months, the American foster parents were complaining that Manisha had behavioural problems and insisting they
would keep her young sister, but not her. Manisha’s case wound up in the Indian courts. The Bombay High Court, which has
been hearing the case, was informed that the link adoption agency (in the US) had placed Manisha with another family, but
things didn’t work out and she was repatriated to India in June 2008. She was admitted to the National Institute of Mental
Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, her adoption revoked and her guardian now is Nigama Mascarenhas, director of the
FWC. The high court said the American couple who adopted Manisha cannot be absolved of responsibility and they are still
liable for financial support for the child's treatment and needs. The court has sought sixmonthly updates on Manisha’s progress.
So how has all of this left an innocent child, flown across continents and rejected twice-over - once by her birth parents and
then by her adoptive father and mother? Her guardian, Mascarenhas says Manisha seemed to be settling down when she
visited the home in December 2010 , she is now trying to find a foothold in life. Staff at the home say the child is endearing and
participates in every activity . Apart from attending a special school that is helping overcome her learning disability, she is
undergoing therapy with a psychologist and a psychiatrist . Counsellors say Manisha has potential to do well in say, the
hospitality sector.
If Manisha is indeed fine, she is one of the luckier ones. There are no statistics of the number of Manishas all over India —
abandoned children, who were adopted overseas and then turned out like a troublesome puppy. Significantly, the Bombay
High Court has used Manisha’s case to ask CARA, India's nodal adoption agency, to plug gaps in the system.
The court asked CARA to create stringent inter-country adoption guidelines, as well as a system that makes foster parents
financially liable if they seek to revoke an adoption.
Activists like Anjali Pawar, of the NGO Sakhee, say this is badly needed. Pawar, who works on issues related to inter-country
adoption in Maharashtra , says, “The existing norms call for monitoring of children adopted by families abroad for five years
after the adoption. But what happens to the child after that, no one knows. The monitoring should go on till the child attains 18
years.”
All of this is urgent. The latest data on CARA’s website shows that in 2009, 666 Indian children were placed with families
abroad. When contacted , a top CARA official said that an expert committee had been constituted to frame stringent guidelines
for inter-country adoption. He claimed that the committee’s report has been sent to the law ministry, denied there had been
delay and insisted the revised guidelines would come into effect soon.
But Bharti Ali of the National Coordination for the Campaign Against Child Trafficking, who has been part of the stakeholders
meetings on the drafting process, contradicts the CARA official’s claim. She says it’s been three months since the stakeholders
24/12/2020 Half a life: Abandoned, adopted, abandoned - Times of India
heard about the status of the guidelines and the draft is anyway “not as tough about protecting the rights of the child if one
reads between the lines.”
Manisha’s case has exposed another grey area. Is India careless about the psychological health of the children it puts up for
overseas adoption? The Bombay High Court has expressed concern about information presented to it, which seemed to
suggest that many Indian children adopted abroad have a disturbed childhood. But what if everything fails and an adopted
child is sent back to its home country from overseas? Ali says it is imperative the Indian government “take responsibility for a
child in case of a failed inter-country adoption.”
Is anyone listening?
?