In the wee hours of Tuesday, the district medical officer in Thiruvananthapuram and staff at the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare received an automatic alert after a baby girl was placed in the Ammathottil (Mother’s Cradle) in front of the council office. The five-day-old infant, who happened to be the 1,000th child received at Ammathottil centres across the state, was aptly named Sahasra.
Kerala established its first cradle in the capital in 2002 with the mission of ensuring that no child is abandoned without care. Over time, the cradles—now present in every district—have earned enough public trust for parents who are unable to raise their children to know that the state will provide them with proper care. Once the Child Welfare Committee takes custody, the child becomes legally eligible for adoption through the Central Adoption Resource Authority after the prescribed waiting period.
It was Tamil Nadu that pioneered the cradle scheme in 1992, when Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa launched it in Salem district following reports of female infanticide. Families unwilling to raise a girl child could leave her at one of the cradles, from where she would later be entrusted to specialised adoption agencies. Eventually, cradles were established at government hospitals, primary healthcare centres and social welfare offices across all districts. The scheme has cared for more than 6,000 infants to date. After Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha and Rajasthan have also launched similar programmes.
Despite their undeniable contribution to saving lives, such schemes have attracted criticism. The principal charge is that they legitimise the abandonment of baby girls by their parents. Critics point to the skewed sex ratio among abandoned children even in a state like Kerala—681 girls against 319 boys. While there is some truth in this criticism, it should not diminish the role these cradles have played in giving a new lease of life to babies who might otherwise never have survived into adolescence or adulthood. In a country where female infanticide remains one of the darkest social realities and the child sex ratio in many states continues to be skewed in favour of boys, the Union government should incentivise all states and Union territories to establish specialised cradle centres to receive abandoned infants. In a society that often does not want daughters, simply staying alive is the first and greatest victory for a baby girl. Governments must do everything possible to ensure that.