Daksha, a shy Gujarati woman in her early 30s, wants a child -- but not for herself. The baby is for the "Britishers," the couple seated in the lobby of the Indian fertility clinic.
It is the first time that the British Asian couple, Ajay and Saroj Shah, from Leicester in central England, have met Daksha. The 31-year-old is "loaning" her womb to them for 150,000 rupees (US$3,377) and is candid about needing the money.
She said her friend was a surrogate mother.
"She was paid well. I am not rich, so the money will help me a lot. I have no problem bringing joy to this family. I do not need another child. I have two of my own," Daksha said.
For the Shahs, who have spent six years and £60,000 (US$105,318) on fertility treatment in the UK with little success, the mixture of money, science and light regulation in India has reignited the hope that they will finally have children.
The British couple appear to be part of a flourishing trade in reproductive tourism in India, which has a more relaxed attitude to paying women for pregnancy, a practice prohibited in many other countries.
Indian clinics report that the incidence of surrogacy has more than doubled in the past three years, with the demand driven by fertility requests from abroad.
The treatment is becoming big business in India and is worth about 20 billion rupees a year. The increase in requests from abroad is partly fueled by the relatively cheap costs. At about £3,000 in the UK, an in vitro fertilization cycle costs five times what one might pay in India.
In addition, in the UK, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has outlawed payments, but a surrogate can be reimbursed a maximum of £10,000 to cover expenses.
India's newspapers have highlighted the trend with reports of couples from Europe and east Asia making flying visits in search of surrogate mothers.
Apart from lower costs, there are other factors drawing patients from abroad. Indian medical guidelines allow doctors to implant five embryos into a surrogate mother; in the UK, the maximum is two.
In India, the surrogate mother's right to the child is not given the same importance as in the West -- she signs away her rights to the baby as soon as the child is born. By contrast, UK law says that a surrogate mother who has provided the egg can claim the baby as her own at any time during the first two years of the child's life.
However, campaigners in the UK question the ethics of such businesses.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in