Whether it is in Mumbai, Delhi or Goa, stories abound of abandoned infants, especially baby girls, dumped in rubbish bins, prey to animals. Less than 2 per cent of approximately 30 million orphans and abandoned children find a place in a facility. For Dr Pascoal Carvalho, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a “society needs to be judged not by its per capita income but by whether we have support systems in place for those who struggle with emotional and material needs.”
Mumbai (AsiaNews) – On the day the Church remembers the Holy Innocent, Martyrs, in India thoughts turn to a long series of stories of abandoned babies who in recent months have shown how the protection of every unborn life is still a distant goal in the country, not only in the poorest rural areas but also in large cities.
A few weeks ago, police in Mumbai found a four-day-old baby girl abandoned on a sidewalk near Borivali West. Another abandoned baby girl had been found in the same suburb in September.
Around the same time, a baby girl was found in Goa, near the Margao wastewater treatment plant. A few weeks later, another baby girl was found, in Delhi this time, in a garbage bin with the mark of an animal bite on her leg.
Again in September, in Mandya, a district in Karnataka, an abandoned newborn was found in a well 30 metres deep. Village residents heard crying and spotted him next to a pile of plastic. Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, police found a two-day-old baby in the bushes, with serious injuries due to ant bites.
Such stories highlight an ongoing tragedy: less than 2 per cent of the approximately 30 million children who are orphaned or abandoned in India find a place in childcare facilities. And less than 2,000 make it into India's legal adoption system.
It should be noted that these figures are approximate. Many of the abandoned children, in fact, are never found; some are simply picked up and taken away without being reported; others fall prey to wild animals.
“This is a serious crisis, a tragedy, the cry of the poor infants; real change id needed,” says Dr Pascoal Carvalho, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
“A developed society,” he notes, “needs to be judged not by its per capita income but by whether we have support systems in place for those who struggle with emotional and material needs. Every person should feel wanted and a contributor for the common good.
“We always feel that atrocities against infants happen only in rural towns and attribute it to lack of or no access to education, etc. But when such instances happen next door to us in highly developed cities, we need to sit up and realise that we have failed both as individuals and as a society. It appears that as we 'progress' we become more and more individualistic and lose our sensitivity to those around us.”
Dr Carvalho notes that, “We do not have enough institutions in our neighbourhood that can be relied upon to support young parents in bringing up their children whilst they are at work. Organisations like the Missionaries of Charity cannot be present everywhere. Each of us has a responsibility to contribute to future generations.”
Likewise, “The Synodal journey calls us all to embrace our vulnerability and open ourselves for compassion, solidarity and support a people journeying together,” thus “bringing hope for a new future in the Church and society”.