When I started my research on surrogacy in 2005, people wondered if I had my facts right. Women getting pregnant for someone else? In our country? Why haven’t we heard about it? The queries ran from disbelief to fascination. In the past two years, however, the Indian and international media have published so many “human interest” stories on this subject that now I can have a debate on the topic with almost anyone who reads a newspaper. The international media cover this industry as a new and sensational form of “outsourcing”. Invariably, the articles start with a description of the pigs, the crowded streets and filth in Anand, move on to the swollen tummies of these enterprising-although-illiterate Indian women and to their life stories filled with drunken husbands and poverty. The articles talk about the cost difference between a surrogacy in Anand and one in the United States and the win-win situation for the two parties involved. The Indian media follow a similar path. But is that all that we need to talk about?

Commercial surrogacy in a developing country involves an amalgam of really thorny issues, almost all of which the media ignores. First are the laws. If surrogacy is really a $445 million a year business (hard data remains elusive), why are there still no laws regulating it? Or maybe I should frame it in a different fashion. Are there no laws in India because unregulated surrogacy is such a lucrative business?

The ministry of women and child development said, once again this week, that it was considering the introduction of legislation to govern surrogacy, but this does not seem imminent. And if a law is passed, whose interests would it serve? A woman unable to carry a baby to term would definitely vote yes for surrogacy. A woman who is able to feed her own child by having a child for someone else would also vote yes. A country and doctors who benefit from the industry are unlikely to say no. So one thing is almost a certainty — unlike countries such as China, Canada , Britain, Turkey, Germany — commercial surrogacy is unlikely to get banned in India .

... contd.