To the outside world, the dusty town of Anand in eastern Gujarat state is known primarily as the hub of Amul Industries and, like everything in Gujarat, emblematic of former chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful development model.
At the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in the town of Anand in Gujarat state, surrogates bear children for childless couples from around the world.
However, for childless couples from around the world, Anand is just a pit stop on their dream to acquire a baby. Each year hundreds of them flock here from as many as 34 countries, winding their way through the traffic-choked, dusty lanes to reach the Akanksha Infertility Clinic, where one baby a day is born on average.
But Anand is also the last hope for many women who have none. Impoverished and beaten to the wall, they come here from all across Gujarat to offer their wombs for rent to feed their families.
These surrogate mothers are housed for the duration of their pregnancies in two sets of hostels where their health and nutrition are monitored.
I expect to find grim, forlorn women when I walk into their hostel during their afternoon siesta but am greeted with good cheer. The jovial environment turns to hilarity when Seema, 31, begins to narrate her story.
“I didn’t have a single penny earlier. Even if I had a ten-rupee note I would keep it tied up in my chunnie. But after I leave this clinic I will have so much money. I will simply go crazy when I see this money. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it all,” she says, breaking off to laugh riotously.
The dozen or so women in the hall, in various stages of pregnancy, all laugh along. The dark humour binds them together. Seema will be paid only about 400,000 rupees (215,000 baht) — one quarter of what the would-be parents spend on the procedure — but it’s more than she can handle.
Many of the women, including Seema, were on the verge of committing suicide due to poverty. Dr Nayana Patel, who started the clinic in 1999, narrates a story that seems like the plot of a Bollywood tearjerker.
“There was a couple who had lost everything and they made a suicide pact. They had even bought poison but before they were about to consume it they decided to have chola kulcha (a chickpea curry snack). A news story about my clinic was in the wrapper and they read it and came here. Today the man has a thriving barber shop in Baroda,” she says.
Though the Akanksha Infertility Clinic provides succour to poor women like Seema, social pressures make it an uphill task for them to go down the route of surrogacy. There is always the danger of being ostracised — a scenario more brutal for them than poverty.
They are not well educated enough to understand the technology that allows a woman to become pregnant without a man being directly involved. The husbands are suspicious and most are reluctant, but the give in grudgingly, having no other hope to survive.
“One husband insisted on sitting outside the room when an embryo was being implanted in his wife’s body to ensure no man went inside,” says Dr Nayana.
Madina, a Muslim woman in her eighth month, says her husband is not happy about her decision to be a surrogate but the couple had no choice. “We are very poor. No one comes here out of happiness. This is our last hope. I am relieved that I have money to pay for my children’s education but am afraid no one will invite me to any social functions now. This [surrogacy] is not allowed in Islam,” she says.
The surrogate mothers have made wise investments with their money, having bought houses or set up shops for their husbands. Many like Manju have returned to the clinic to become surrogates again.
Manju’s husband died of drinking a few years ago and, like many, she found surrogacy as a way to seek a future. She bought a house with the money from the first surrogacy. Now she is in the ninth month of her second surrogacy. “I have two sons. They study in the hostel. I want to secure a good future for them,” she says.
There are rules for surrogate mothers just as there are for the clinic’s childless clients. The surrogates have to be no younger than 21 years and no older than 35. If they are married, the husband’s consent is important. No woman can be a surrogate more than three times. At the Akanksha clinic, all the surrogates have to be from Gujarat.
The parents, meanwhile, have to accept the child after it is born. They cannot choose the surrogate’s religion or caste. They need to be married. Needless to say, they also have to be very rich.