weaning facts

348,000.

At last count, that’s how many hits you got if you googled ‘adopting a child in India’.
But go past Branjelina’s visit to an orphanage in Pune (several pages) and the official sites of adoption centres. You’ll reach a point where you will want to drop the idea of adoption along with your clothes, and start procreating madly.

There is a video of a sting operation about an infant who was taken away from his mother to be given up for adoption. 34 years later, the child (now an angry adult) is back in India, enraged about having been a victim of a lucrative ‘deal’.

I read blogs of women who were turned away because they didn’t make more than Rs. 80,000 a month. (The Indian laws for adoption stipulate a monthly income of Rs. 5000).
There are adoption centers that brazenly ask for donations, and bend the rules of age for people who can afford to donate tens of thousands of dollars.

There are stories about orphanages that turn away Indian parents, because there’s more to gain by giving children to foreigners.

But on one of the back pages, buried under the muck was a faith-restoring news clipping.