Infertility

India’s health industry is already slated to be worth 2.3 billion dollars by 2012 by performing cheap surgery for foreigners.

Patel says she has not received any complaints about the practice but has had many e-mails from the United States and Britain, including white couples, lured by the prospect of a surrogate child for some 225,000 rupees (5,060 dollars) compared with some 40,000 dollars in the US.

Overseas-based Indians are comforted since the surrogate mother has the same cultural background and has few rights to the child once it is born, according to Patel.

Industry guidelines brought out last year to regulate the work of the country’s 250 or so IVF clinics estimated that up to 19 million couples in India were likely to be infertile.

Hardly any of the clinics are involved in surrogacy work.

But with booming India creating new middle-class couples able to pay for fertility treatment, the demand for surrogates is also increasing.

A high-profile case of a woman who gave birth to her own grandchildren on behalf of her UK-based daughter in 2004 was responsible for making this tobacco-growing area the surrogate centre of India.

There is no law here now on surrogacy but national guidelines from 2005 are expected to be enshrined in...

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