Adoption Fills Empty Homes with Cheer Amid Pandemic Gloom in 2021, Covid Orphans Seek Fresh Start in '22

When the devastating Covid second wave hit India in April 2021, there was barely a family in India left untouched by the virus. The wave, one of the worst experienced by any nation, may have abated, but it has left in its wake a saga of trauma and death.

As 2021 comes to a close, while many are consumed by memories of loss and despair, some look forward to a new beginning. News18.com? brings to you stories of those people who have lost and gained a family this year.

The ‘nowhere’ children

According to a Lancet study, around 1.16 lakh children in India may have lost a parent to Covid from March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021. The breakdown showed an estimated 25,500 children losing their mothers, some 90,751 their fathers, and 12 both parents to the disease. An assessment by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) suggests around 3,620 children lost both their parents, some 26,176 lost one of them and 274 have been abandoned in the country since the pandemic struck.

The plight of the orphaned or ‘nowhere’ children led to an increased chatter around ‘adoption’. While it was thought of as a viable option, many also feared the threat of child trafficking, often in the form of social media messages calling for the direct adoption of children.

Adoption grants new lease of life to many

Young couple Nidhi and Kushal were recovering from the loss of their unborn child when the news of their neighbours dying in the Covid second wave added to their woes. The deceased couple’s surviving five-year-old was left under the foster care of his ailing grandparents. The retired grandparents with little to no savings were contemplating putting the child up for adoption when Nidhi and Kushal stepped in to legally adopt him.

“We will be through with the legal procedures this January. The past year has been difficult for all of us. We can’t wait to have a new start with our newest family member,” said Nidhi.

Six-year-old Sakshi (name changed) was found sitting beside the corpse of her mother in Faridabad in May when the second wave at its peak in India rendered her an orphan. Having witnessed her mother’s death due to Covid at close quarters, the child welfare committee had expressed little hope in Sakshi’s return to normalcy until she was taken in by a family consisting of a mother and her six children.

Sakshi says she still sees her mother in her dreams, asking her to come with her. She, however, resists the urge, saying she has found a new mother and family and now wishes to lead the rest of her life with them.

The plethora of unprecedented deaths all around had deeply impacted Jai Sharma, a resident of Dehradun, who then took up the noble cause of helping the children who lost both their parents to Covid-19. The founder of the NGO Just Open Yourself (JOY) had planned to adopt 100 orphaned children. The NGO, through its Facebook page, announced the adoption plan, whereby, out of the 100, 28 are already receiving financial aid from the organisation.

“These children are based out of Uttarkashi, Joshimath, Rudraprayag, and Dehradun districts. We aim to finance the education of these students for the next 2-3 years until they become self-reliant," Sharma told Times of India. “When the second wave of Covid-19 started, we encountered five such families in the initial two weeks where both the parents had died, and the child/children were left alone at home. A few of these children were of classes 4th-5th age group, one was in 12th, and the rest were small in age. At that moment, it hit our mind that this unfortunate scenario is inevitable, and we were to come across more such cases as the pandemic rose."

The above are only a few in a sea of over 2,000 children in Delhi who lost either one or both parents to the novel coronavirus. Many are still waiting in overcrowded shelter homes seeking a new family.

But, not every orphaned child is adopted

A report by BBC stated that 3,351 children were adopted in the year between 2019 and March 2020, while tens of thousands were orphaned. This stark gap was widened in the second Covid wave of 2021 when India recorded deaths to the tune of hundreds every hour.

While there were enquiries by prospective parents about the procedures to adopt the children orphaned due to Covid, the delayed process of adoption owing to the pandemic and the risk of infection discouraged many to go ahead with it, says a Kolkata-based shelter home for children.

The outbreak of the pandemic in March had brought the adoption process across India to a standstill for several reasons including lack of information, closure of courts and fear of contracting the infection. These reasons refrained prospective parents (PPs) from approaching adoption centres. However, even after restarting the process of adoptions in June, it could not surpass 437, data from Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) revealed.

This was corroborated by Anurag Kundu, the chairperson for the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

“It is a myth that every child is adopted," Kundu told BBC in a report, whereby he also advocated a short-term focus on foster care, rather than full adoption, to help alleviate the problem.

“Family members can always come forward. Foster care is a great idea but in our country, it has not taken off, even though there is a specific provision in the law," Kundu was quoted saying.

Foster care allows children to be looked after by families and friends and they don’t have to wait in overcrowded care homes for someone to adopt them. Experts say it can help improve India’s dismal adoption rates as more families may come forward to look after such children temporarily, which may eventually motivate them to formally adopt.

While the Indian government has announced measures to help orphaned children with a fund of around Rs 10 lakh set aside for each child, which will be given to them as a stipend from the ages of 18-23, child care experts are pushing for ease in adoption laws as they believe that growing in the absence of a family may be more detrimental to a child’s health than the absence of funds.

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