The Times of India is reporting s significant drop in the number of adoptions from that country, saying that both domestic and international adoptions have seen a reduction of almost 40 percent between 2001 and 2003.

A recent report is cited that researched information collected from more than twenty-two countries that have added internationally adopted children to families of citizens and found that only 0.034% had India as a birth country in 2006.

"In 1980s India was the second major source for adoptions. But now it has the lowest adoption ratio among any other countries and the number has been falling," Peter Selman, Reader in Social Policy of University of Newcastle in UK who compiled the report.

There's an odd quote at the end of the story attributed to Tom DiFilipo of the Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) that indicates that adoption from India is "really a difficult task that may take a minimum of one to three years", then:

For the first time, he said, "globally we have more families available to legally adopt the children from India, than the adoptable children."

I do so hope he didn't say that, as the idea that there are more hopeful adoptive parents in the world than orphaned and abandoned children in India is ludicrous.

With somewhere near 12.4 MILLION estimated orphans in India in 2006, any claim that suggests such a ratio should be immediately taken to task.

If the sticking point is "adoptable" children, then that speaks to a the tragedy that would prevent some children from the opportunity of family, and once again, those would number in the millions.

For an example of Indian orphans who lose out on most of what might be available to a few 'lucky' kids without parents, here's a report on one group of 15,000 or so who are completely ignored ... the orphans of militants killed in the Kashmir conflict over the past 17 years.

And here is another look that puts the total number of orphans in Kashmir at around 80,000.

Activists and NGOs are beginning to make some noise about the fate of these children, and now that some are growing up even the Indian government is giving them some thought, worrying that "If this problem is not addressed then these children might go astray and pick up guns."

Well, yeah ...


Image: Wikimedia Commons