Why India's Orphaned Children Aren’t Making It to Adoption

Krishna Sharma was so excited to adopt a child that she counted down how long the process took. The entire process took “two years and three months,” she said. Now 43, Sharma is about to adopt a second child. She’s been holding off for the "right moment" to undergo the tedious adoption process for the second time.

Like Sharma, there are over 36,000 parents waiting to adopt children in India. There are 30 million orphaned, abandoned or surrendered children in India, according to UNICEF. But, only 2,785 children are in the adoption system. This is the core issue plaguing India’s adoption system: if only around 2,700 children out of 30 million are legally on the adoption list , where are the other over 29 million kids?

Numbers That Don’t Add Up

UNICEF records divide India’s 30 million unclaimed children into three categories: orphaned, abandoned or surrendered (OAS).

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) under the Ministry of Women & Child Development is the only legal pool in India for adoption. As of July 2025, as per CARA’s data, the number of prospective adoptive parents (PAP) stood at 36,476, and the number of OAS children available for adoption was not even 10 per cent of that—there are only 2,785 children in the adoption matrix.

An OAS child must be evaluated by the appropriate authorities to be considered legally free for adoption.

 The process of evaluating a child involves ensuring that there is no alternative custodian. District Child Protection Units (DCPUs) and Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) are the authorities responsible for investigating whether an unclaimed child has any surviving relatives. This detailed effort to trace the family includes police investigations, social background studies and newspaper notifications. This process can take up to nine months. In cases of abandonment, a mandatory reconsideration period is given to the guardian for their ward.

Only cases where there is clear evidence of no parental involvement can then a child be classified under the OAS category, making the child ‘legally free’ for adoption.

 Meanwhile, the number of prospective parents registering for adoption increases at a much faster rate than that of the children joining the legal pool.

 A Times of India report found that in March, adoptions for 2024–25 crossed 4,500 — the highest in 11 years. Yet for many PAPs, the process of adopting a child continues to be a challenge, with an average of three and a half years waiting period for those seeking infants or young children.

With the long adoption waiting time and slow intake of children into CARA, the numbers reflect lives that are being placed on hold.

Why do children get left behind?

The findings of a research team from Child Welfare and Action Foundation (better known as Where Are India's Children) aimed to understand the discrepancy in these numbers. The research reports that once vulnerable children reach the child shelters, their movement through the child protection mechanism to join the legal pool of adoption under CARA is not guaranteed.

 “There is a general apathy about children from Child Care Institutions (CCIs) reaching the legal adoption pool,” said Meera Marthi, co-founder of the CWAF foundation

Marthi explained how some children never get the opportunity to be adopted due to logistical lapses. She said, “Children between the ages of 6 to 18 are housed in CCIs. Younger children from birth until they are six are housed in Specialised Adoption Agencies (SAAs). Now, children who, for some reason, were not processed for adoption before the age of 6 remain without evaluation when they join CCIs. Thus, not entering the adoption pool. They grow up as institutionalised children. ”

Marthi states that CCIs believe that they have done their needful by providing a child with the basic needs, so they don’t bother with looking for adoption for these children. This is where Marthi found a “general apathy” in CCIs. However, she also brings up the point that there are also hardworking CCIs who lack the awareness and understanding of the process of adoption of children and their role. There is also a lack of understanding in the DCPUs.

CARA is the only formal legal pool of adoption in India. All the children who are available for adoption are thoroughly vetted by various levels of the government before they are registered for adoption.

Former CARA CEO Deepak Kumar, speaking on the vigorous evaluation process, said, “It is a deliberate process to ensure a child can be declared legally free.”

Kumar stated, “While there are many children in need of care, only those legally cleared after this rigorous process enter the adoption pool, if there is no conflict in claim.”

While referring to the ‘2,785’ number mentioned on CARA’s website, Kumar clarified, “The number that you can see is those kids who are legally free for adoption. Since the waiting list of parents is more, the moment a child is declared legally free, it is a priority to place these children for adoption.”

Confusion in the System

Marthi claimed that a major change in the system came when the government launched the CARINGS Portal (Central Adoption Resource Information Guidance System). It is a centralised digital system through which all legal adoptions in India are processed. It was launched to streamline, digitise, and monitor every stage of adoption.

She explained, “Government authorities did not keep up with the changing law. With the changes in the Juvenile Justice Amendment Act (JJ Act) and then the CARINGS Portal, we found that there was a lack of clarity on the side of CCIs, DCPUs and CWCs about their role. All of whom play an integral role in the verification and declaration of a child to be legally free for adoption.”

DCPUs and CWCs are the authorities that start the process of evaluating a child for CARA by identifying them as OAS. CARA heavily relies on these bodies for the groundwork of adoption.

Marthi highlighted the hardship of implementing policy change on the grassroots level. She claims that a significant amount of these changes, intended for the betterment of the system, are “falling through the gaps” between the various stakeholders.

She explains, “Despite CARA running refresher training programs with various states and their respective stakeholders, there is a lot of confusion. Once there is an introduction of something new, the implementation of it becomes even harder because the understanding is poor.”

As a knowledge partner of CARA, the Children Welfare and Action Foundation helps reach these grassroots much like the various other NGOs assisting in this program.

She said, “NGOs in this field help out with capacity building. We train the DCPUs and CWCs to ensure that they are up to date with the changing laws, amendments rules. In certain cases where more clarity is required, handhold them. Our team is out on the ground, so whenever we are submitting data, we debrief them on how we collect data and how to categorise OAS children and explain terminology.”

Kumar also stressed the critical role of district-level authorities in ensuring the integrity of the adoption process. “The role of the CWC and the DCPU is very important,” he said, emphasising their responsibility in monitoring and verifying children’s cases on the ground.

According to Kumar, these bodies must remain “very vigilant at the grassroots level,” as neither CARA at the central level nor state headquarters can realistically track what’s happening in every child care institution. “Centrally, sitting in Delhi or even at the state level, nobody will be able to monitor what is happening at the grassroots,” he noted.

These various parts in the adoption system must be aware of and perform their responsibilities to prevent denying OAS children the opportunity to be adopted.

Juvenile Justice Act and Hindu Adoption Maintenance Act

CARA operates within the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2015, and its Amendment in 2021.

The route of CARA and the JJ Act involves several legal checks. Meanwhile, the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (HAMA), 1956, provides a legal gap which bypasses CARA oversight, lacking independent clearance processes and central monitoring.

HAMA governs adoption and maintenance among Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs in India. Under this law, adoption is a personal act that does not require clearance from a central authority like CARA. A Hindu adult can adopt a child through a simple legal deed, without any requirement to declare the child “legally free for adoption,” as mandated under the Juvenile Justice Act.

This makes HAMA a parallel but less regulated route to adoption, lacking systemic safeguards such as background checks, institutional oversight, or post-adoption follow-ups. As a result, many adoptions under HAMA do not appear in CARA’s official statistics, contributing to the apparent mismatch between adoptable children and waiting parents.

Kumar acknowledged the persistent mismatch between the number of adoptive parents and children legally free for adoption, a gap the agency is well aware of.

Kumar pointed out that a significant number of adoptions in India take place outside the CARA-regulated system, under HAMA: “That act is not directly administered by CARA; thus, these statistics are not reflected in the CARINGS portal.”

Kumar stated this as the reason the number of children entering the legal system gets diluted.

This child-parent imbalance causes a growing waiting list with long waiting periods, which he identified as a systemic problem.

The Parents’ Wait

For Sharma, who adopted through CARA in 2019, the process was riddled with frustration. “CARA behaves like any typical government department.  It's so difficult to get through to them, talk to them, or get someone who can talk straight.”

She claimed that one of the major pain points during the adoption process was contacting CARA, “Even when you do get through to the number, any random person picks up the phone and the answer is always ‘we don’t have that information right now’.”

During her home evaluation, she was informally asked to pay for the travel of the agent coming for the inspection. The agent claimed to have travelled by cab from Lucknow to Delhi, thus a fare totalling around eight thousand. Though Sharma found this odd, she paid by cheque, later discovering it went to the staffer’s personal account.

Sharma stated, “You just play along. That is what you do because you know your file for adoption is in their hands, because of that, we can’t risk bad blood or them creating hurdles for us. We have to play along.”

Even after adoption, Sharma claimed there was no follow-up check. “I wrote to CARA that they need to come and conduct the process. Their excuse was it’s COVID time.”

However, for Sharma, who was filing for a second adoption, the first adoption process and the three home visits had to be marked as completed on the website for the registration for the second to go through. Thus, after escalating the matter, Sharma was able to secure a home visit; however, the agent completed all three home inspections within one day.

Sharma insisted that these processes have to be conducted in an orderly fashion. She said, “ These children have no one other than the agency fighting for them. So if the agency is neglecting its duties, it won’t be discovered by these authorities if the children end up getting adopted into abusive households or trafficked. What is the system in place for if not this?”

Sowmyaa Bharadwaj, who adopted her older daughter the same year, experienced inaccuracy in the details of the child.

She stated, “Unfortunately, my child’s date of birth was entirely wrong.” She claimed that her daughter’s age was inaccurately recorded by the childcare agency. “Six kids from the CCIs of that district who looked around the same age were all given the same date of birth by the local committee.”

Bharadwaj discovered the age of her child at the mandatory medical check-up. She says, “The nurse told us that your kid is not more than 17-18 months. So if she's not doing things that a 2-year-old should, you shouldn't be worried. We were fortunate to get this heads-up, but I don’t know if the other parents were ever told.”

Bharadwaj received the birth certificate for her daughter nine months after the adoption had taken place, according to which her daughter was 23 months, but in actuality was 17-18 months old.

She also raised the issue that at the time of a referral, all she received was a pixilated 2x2 picture of her daughter, based on which she had to make her decision, as there was no alternative to contact the agency or CARA for further details.

In the case of the adoption of her second child, Bharadwaj, who was well aware of the delays in the system, opted not to fixate on any specifications for the child, as the algorithm works after that case.

Three years and nine months after applying in 2021, she received the first referral and adopted in April, 2025

Bharadwaj noted the improvement in the CARA system and CCIs from the time of her first adoption to the second, “ While COVID did cause delays and pushback, it did improve the system in a few ways. Now, if a parent is not satisfied with the referral picture they receive, they can call up the agency and request a video call or more pictures of the child instead of taking a leap of faith based on a single pixelated picture. Secondly, now District Magistrates can issue birth certificates, thus the wait has gone down to two weeks.”

A long-time NGO worker, Sowmyaa, saw firsthand how unprepared many child care institutions were. “We as parents helped them to create their Excel sheets and their monitoring templates. I don’t think they receive any kind of handholding from CARA or the state SARA.”

For both mothers, the adoption journey was one of persistence despite the system, not because of it.

Need of the hour

Marthi and her team identified two core issues: lack of logistical awareness among stakeholders and absence of centralised digitalisation.

To address this, the Children's Welfare and Action Foundation developed a tech-based solution to make children outside the legal adoption pool visible. Their recommendation is a technology-driven, child-centric system—suggesting biometric-based IDs, Aadhaar integration to flag missing data, and automated tracking of each child’s journey. Algorithms could identify adoption-eligible children based on shelter stay or family absence. Real-time dashboards and alerts for CWCs and DCPUs, along with linking TrackCHILD and CARINGS, are also advised.

The research highlights India’s weak adoption mindset. The ‘right to family’ is not widely understood. Moving a child through adoption inquiries is high effort; keeping them in shelters is easier and often preferred. While shelters know children want families, there is inertia in making them adoptable.

Marthi stressed that the right to a family is as essential as food, shelter, or education. “We think the basic needs are there — so why even look beyond that? But the primary need of a child is a family — one that provides belonging, identity, guidance, and support, even beyond the age of 18.” She urged reforms to prioritise this right, especially when guardians are unfit. “We’re not saying terminate parental rights... evaluate. If the guardian is unfit, shouldn’t we at least assess whether that child deserves a better chance at permanency?”

As she puts it, adoption must become a priority for Women and Child Development authorities, not an afterthought.

Until change is implemented on a grassroots level, OAS children continue to be left behind.