Source: indiaspend.com | Image Courtesy: theideabureau

Finally, some good news from the various adoption centres across India. An RTI filed by onlineRTI.com has revealed that people are no longer shying away from adopting girl-children. In fact, 60% of all children adopted in India in the last three years have been girls (6755 girls compared to 4463 boys).

Data for the past three years suggest that, on average, 60% of couples adopted a girl, 40% a boy.

The reasons for this change could be many, right from the fact that people are now looking at girls as equal to boys, or the fact that there are more adoptable girls at any given point of time than boys, possibly because boys are not abandoned by parents as much as girls are. This seems to have created a demand-supply gap, and people are therefore going ahead with adoption of girl-children instead of waiting for adoptable boy-children.

Between April to June 2015, child adoption centres across India received 1,241 requests to adopt a girl against 718 for a boy.

This trend is visible not just in the supposedly progressive states, but also in the traditionally patriarchal states like Haryana.

Indeed, the nation as a whole has witnessed a rapid rise in the participation of women in work as well as education. Girls have been able to perform better than boys in most school exams over the last one decade. As a society too, we have come a long way from where we were not too long ago, when women were still expected to remain at home and look after the family instead of venturing out and doing well in their careers and gaining financial independence. More and more walks of life are witnessing the rise of many women to prominence, a heartening sign for the cause of gender equality.

We hope this positive trend continues and adoption, not just of girls but also of boys, sees an upward trend until there is no need to maintain adoption centres anywhere.

This article is based on data that first appeared in an article by indiaspend.com