The ‘rent a womb’ industry in India is witnessing a boom, with infertility affecting one in every six couples. Commercial surrogacy, of which Delhi is a known hub, was legalised in India in 2002. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has predicted the industry will generate $ 2-3 billion annually.

In India, while the exact numbers are not recorded, guess estimates put the number of children born to surrogates at 25,000, with 50 per cent of the clients coming from the West.

What works for India is the cheap medical facilities, advanced reproductive technological know-how, coupled with poor socio-economic conditions, and a lack of regulatory laws.

Accepting that India is fast being recognised as an “attractive option” for commercial surrogacy centre, human rights activists maintain that while commercial surrogacy in itself is welcome “where persons unable to have children are aided by willing surrogates to have their biological children, problem comes in due to the exploitative nature of the business and lack of regulation in the industry”.

“No fixed compensation structure, no laws that cater to the health and number of births that a surrogate can support and usually incomplete advertisements of the services by medical establishments work against the interest of the women involved in the case,’’ said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, director, the Centre for Social Research.

A report on “Surrogacy Motherhood: Ethical or Commercial?” supported by the Ministry of Women and Child Development noted that 46 per cent of respondents in Delhi, and 44 per cent in Mumbai said they received Rs.3 lakh to Rs.3.99 lakh for being a surrogate mother. Among those interviewed, 68 per cent in Delhi and 78 per cent in Mumbai said they were employed mostly as domestic helps earning more than Rs.3,000 a month. “This clearly points to the exploitative nature of business,” noted Dr. Kumari.

There are two main types of surrogacy — gestational and traditional and in India it can be arranged through an agency or independently.

“With the country becoming a hub for surrogacy, there is an urgent need for a stringent legal framework to regulate it. The unregulated reproductive tourism industry of ‘procreating’ through surrogacy is rapidly increasing in India, while there is still no legal provision to safeguard the interests of all the major stakeholders involved in the surrogacy arrangement, i.e., the surrogate mother, the child or the commissioning parents,’’ said Dr. Kumari.

According to the study conducted by the Centre for Social Research in 2011-12, it was revealed that though the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Regulation Bill, 2010, did bring forth certain important points, for the legal framework to be based, it has left out many crucial issues relating to surrogacy arrangements.

The study noted that there are many issues besides sex selection and exploitation of the poor surrogate mothers.

“There are countries that do not allow surrogacy; what would the nationality of the child be when the intended parents are from that country? About 48 per cent couples opting for surrogacy are foreigners,” noted the study. The CII notes that the industry is growing in India because it is largely unregulated and cheap.

“Clinics function in tight cliques, with unrelated centres like dental clinics sometimes assisting fertility clinics. Although there are no fixed rules related to the amount of compensation for the surrogate mother, it is arbitrarily decided by the clinics. Often the woman who delivers the baby is paid very less for it. Though the couple who wants to have a baby through surrogate mothers pays anything between Rs.2 lakh and Rs.5 lakh to agents, the woman who delivers the baby gets only Rs.75,000 to Rs. 1 lakh,’’ adde Dr. Kumari.