Adoption in India

A few decades ago, the adoption scene in India was inactive and one-sided at best. Raising children not born in the family was considered unacceptable by most Indians, and even though some Indians wanted to adopt, most orphaned children went abroad. But 1984 brought the country’s first adoption regulations, and by 1989 a quota system was introduced that required 25 percent of all orphaned children to be adopted within India. Since then, a social revolution has taken place, and more orphaned and abandoned children have a waiting list of parents who want to take them home.

According to the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) 1,707 children were adopted in India last year. (This figure does not include agencies not registered with CARA, but with state governments for domestic adoptions only. Because of the large number of such agencies, CARA estimates the actual domestic figure is two to three times as high.) In addition, 1,021 children were cleared for foreign and non-resident Indian families to adopt.

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