Adoption and Child Rights in India Child Rights in India: Law, Policy and Practice by Asha Bajpai Review

by: Neera Burra Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 46 (Nov. 15-21, 2003), p. 4850 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4414277 . Accessed: 16/01/2014 03:38
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Adoption and in India Rights

Child Rights in India: Law, Policy and Practice by Asha Bajpai; Oxford University Press. Delhi, 2003; pp xx + 504, Rs 695.
NEERA BURRA

Chil
police in registering missing children resulted in a couple losing their loved ones. There are other judgments that the author comments on. She takes us on a journey of discovery of how issues related to a common secular law on adoption were discussed by majorreligions in Indiaduring the debates of the constituent assembly. She also looks at the attempts of two state governments to adopt state legislation and the reasons for their failure. The chapteron the right to parentalcare similarlytakes up throughthe ancienttexts, moving on to case law from various parts of the country, summing up nicely the key issues that emerged in court proceedings. Her own fieldwork material, reviewing the petitions/orders passed by family courts in Mumbai and the impact such invasive procedures have on children, is discussed at length here and a number of important recommendations are made. Unfortunately,the richness anddepth of these two chapters is not to be found in the rest of the book. The material on the rightagainsteconomic exploitation, which deals with child labour, reads like a report prepared for a workshop or conference. There is neither fresh data nor new analysis. The contents read like background materials preparedfor seminars and conferences. The chapter merely lists definitions of child labour, major sectors where children work, the magnitude of the problem, legal provisions and deficiencies in various acts. All the information provided is available in any basic document on child labour. The chapter on the right to protection against sexual abuse and exploitation is of patchy quality. Some partsof the chapter are interesting, particularly where the author describes the work being done in

'lW hen I first picked up Asha Bajpai's

book Child Rights in India and went throughthe table of contents, I was somewhat overwhelmed. This 488-page book deals with a whole range of issues from the legal definition of children to adoption, custody and guardianship; child labour, sexual abuse and exploitation. juvenile justice and right to development; andshelter.Thereis almost health,nutrition nothing concerned with children that is not touched upon. I was worried that a book with so much data would not make for easy reading. The first 36 pages confirmed my worst fears, as they contain nothing more than a listing of acts and notifications, programmes and policies for children. I am glad, however, that I did not put the book down and continued to read, as some of the chapters were indeed extremely interesting. The chapter on adoption provides a fascinating account of how issues of adoption were depicted in mythology and how various religions sanctified adoption. Some interesting case law material has been used to show how complex this mattercan be. The authorhas obviously researched extensively and focused upon the major highlights of judgments in this area. One particularcase study drew my attention as it was a story of two missing girls belonging to landless labourers.These girls were found wandering and placed in a home for destitute children.The parentsfiled a complaint but it was not registered. Later, a Swedish couple adopted the girls thinking they were orphans. After several years, when the original parents found out that their children had been adopted, they could do nothing and the courts ruled in favour of the adoptive parents because that was considered to be in the best interest of the children.The negligence and apathyof the 4850

countries like the UK, US and Australia. But a major problem with this chapter, as also with most other chapters, is that there is information overload. The reader gets the feeling that the author wanted to get every single issue ever raised about children included in this volume. This leads to reader fatigue. The next chapteron the rightto development suffers from similar drawbacks. It reads like a situational analysis for a seminar. It draws heavily from the 1999 Unicef State of the World's Children Report and the Unicef web site. There are other more recent books and paperson the subject which add more to our understanding on the issue of the right to development. In fact, the chapter title itself is somewhat misleading because the notion of the right to development goes well beyond entitlements to basic services. The data on the chapter on the right to survival is without firm foundation. Most of it seems to be basedon workshopreports. It is hard to understandwhether the weak database is because there is simply no data available on children's health, child care and HIV/AIDS or whether the author was not able to access the data. Given the numberof multilateral,bilateral, state and civil society organisationsworkingon these issues, the infirmity of the data ts surprising. Naturally, it affects the quality of analysis. The concluding chapter of the book, on making child rights a reality, reads like a pious litany of the well intentioned and is also repetitive. Some of the recommendations, however, are useful. The chapters on adoption and parental care provide deep insights and are based upon solid research. The author's legal background stands her in good stead in the selection and use of case-law material. The rest of the book suffers from an ambition to be too comprehensive and a tendency to collate enormousamountsof data, which often seems unnecessary. The bibliography is useful and despite its limitations, thebook can be of value as a reference work for activists and researchers. l

This book is about how to bring about stability and development in the region with all

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due respectto religious.philosophical and moral pluralism. K P BAGCHI & COMPANY

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Economic and Political Weekly

November 15, 2003

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