Abandoned baby girls are finding homes in India........

Hundreds of baby girls are abandoned in India every year but at the same time there are people in this country who do want them. This trend is ofcourse confined to the elite and upper middle classes in metros. In fact it’s been wonderful to see the number of people wanting to adopt the baby girl who was left outside a railway station recently. It started with the choreographer and ex-model Achala Sachdev who wanted her (Mumbai Mirror), but soon after the requests started to pour in! The adoption agencies are delighted and hospital authorities quite overwhelmed. According to a social worker who was quoted in a Times of India report:

Earlier parents would make detailed enquiries about the background of a child. Just the fact that there are so many requests for a girl child in a patriarchal set-up is encouraging

In fact, because of the response, JJ Hospital had to restrict visitors. And after the mandatory of a period of three months before the baby is given for adoption (in case the birth mother turns up) the baby will find a loving home.
Some cynics might attribute this rush to adopt the girl to people’s sympathies being aroused by a poor abandoned baby. But from what I see around me there are many upper middle class Indian couples who actually prefer girls to boys. This trend started some years ago but is now growing steadily.
Two of my friends who adopted baby girls have this to say:
M, who could not have a biological child of her own tells me, “I love girls and that is why adoption worked so well for me.”
My other friend R, whose first child is biological (a son) said, “We wanted a girl and that is why we chose adoption.”
There is also one couple who preferred a girl because they felt that she would not claim the property! Well, whatever the motive, at least baby girls are finding a home in their birth country.
At one time baby girls from India had no choice but to be sent to foreign shores. As this article explains:

…international adoptees — particularly girls - (are) brought to the United States from countries such as India and China over the last two decades. In America, there are more than 1.5 million children who are international adoptees. Many of these children have been adopted by a multiracial family. During the 1980s and 1990s, airplanes with malnourished Indian baby girls — two to a wicker basket - landed regularly at the Minneapolis airport. It is much more common for girls to be adopted than boys, largely because of long-standing traditional practices, like dowry, that make girls an economic liability for poor families.