Adoption is a word that needs to be used with a lot of care and post a lot of preparation within an Indian Family. Post all that preparation my husband and I went forward to various centers in Hyderabad (We were there then!) to get the process rolling. Unfortunately for us, there was a child racket going on in Hyd around that time, and the adoption procedures there came to a standstill. So decided to get things moving in Pune where my friend had adopted a couple of years back. Went for a visit to the Hospital cum adoption center and met up the kind folks and came back with dreams.
They said that a huge list of things that were required, would be sent later to us. When the list came we were stumped.
1. Medical certificate of infertility (Hmmm...Did Angeline Jolie do the same?)
 2. Approval from parents from both sides that they agree to the adoption and are 'happy' 3. Police verification certificate 4. AIDS test certificate
5. Cancer test certicate
6. A huge list of miscellaneous tests ranging from heart to blood
7. An assurance from a couple (Not parents) that they will adopt the child if we both die
8. Salary slip
9. Conduct certificate from the company we work in (???)
10. Verification numbers of 3 sets of people who are not relatives
11. A 5 pager which husband and wife need to fill independantly about their 'emotions' regarding adoption
12. Birth certificate from both sides
13. Ration card
14. Domicile cert
15. Marriage certificate (Did Sushmita Sen give one?) Some of these were almost impossible to get like the assurance from people to take on your child in the circumstance of death. Thats where friends stepped in and after about a year (in between shifting jobs, moving houses, moving towns etc) we had all the papers ready. When we sent all the docs to the Pune place there was no response. Quickly contacted the friend who introduced us there, and he gave us the main persons number. Once contacted, we were informed that currently they work on adoptions only for NRI's.
 Fortunately for us, the Karnataka coordinating agency helped us with another institute in Pune. But this one wanted us to take an Australian AIDS test, declare our property and they also felt that the friends who had agreed upon taking our child after us, were in their 40's and they wanted a younger couple's assurance. Currentl
y my husband and I have decided to give this a break, since we are just getting aggravated. We have been advised many times to work around the system and just get children who are abandoned in a hospital, but its a scary thought since you never know if the child given to you is really abandoned or stolen by some guy from some frantic mom, for some quick bucks. We have been approached by another center here in Bangalore and we are open to the same, but its already been 2 years since the work started for a baby...and it is a country with 15%of the world's population and a birth rate of 22.8 /1000. What would it take to change the system?