India opening to adoptions Utah's governor and his wife recently adopted a baby girl from Gujarat state. India will soon streamline procedures.
By Rebecca Walsh
The Salt Lake Tribune
Posted: 12/25/2006 05:16:40 PM MST


Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., left, and his wife, Mary Kaye, watch as their daughter Gracie Mae, center left, greets her new sister, Asha, at an orphanage in Nadid, India, last week. The family decided to adopt from India in part because of the privation they saw there. (Salt Lake Tribune / Chris Detrick )New Delphi - Last month, three babies were dropped into a metal basket hanging in a niche in the outer wall of the Welfare Home for Children. Their mothers closed the glass doors and pushed an alarm button to alert orphanage staff, who retrieved the newborns.

All three infants are thriving in the nursery of the Christian "foundling home." They are the youngest of 60 children who are being raised by "home mothers" and "sister nurses" while they wait for adoption. Some of them will never find a permanent home. And when they turn 10, they will be transferred to a vocational school.

But an orphanage is often better than the alternative in India.

In a country of 1 billion people that boasts an ancient culture and the world's largest democracy, Indians are proud to note the record-setting growth of the country's gross domestic product and a growing middle class. At the same time, poverty is obvious and everywhere - from the dusty children who crowd around idling taxis in the capital, selling copies of Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," to the women obsessively sweeping in front of tent cities.

This is the country where Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and his wife, Mary Kaye, have chosen to adopt - in part because of the privation Huntsman observed on previous trips.

On Tuesday, Utah's first family picked up their 13-month-old daughter, Asha, at an orphanage in the western state of Gujarat.


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"You've got to actually be there to understand what it means to come from an orphanage," says Huntsman. "You're awestruck by the power of kids, even at their earliest ages, kids with power and energy who have dreams and hopes and aspirations. They all want to be loved. They all want to be cared for."

The government preference is to place abandoned children with Indian families. And although adoption in the country has increased in recent years, Indian parents can be picky, according to Ramesh Bhandari, a Welfare Home consultant and former juvenile court judge. They want babies. Light-skinned. With no defects.

In 2001, the U.S. State Department issued 543 visas for Indian orphans. That number fell to 323 last year. By comparison, 7,906 Chinese orphans were issued visas for adoption.

Yeshpal Dabas, secretary of the Central Adoption Resource Agency, expects India's adoption numbers to increase next year when a "streamlined" process is put in place.