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Clinics in the area began operating as full-service agencies. They did not just provide medical procedures; they facilitated the matching of intended parents with surrogates, often housing the women in "surrogate homes" or hostels for the duration of the pregnancy. These facilities were designed to monitor the health of the surrogate and the fetus, but they also served to control the women’s movements and environment, creating a stark physical divide between the "carrier" and the outside world.
In the popular imagination, the global fertility industry is often associated with gleaming clinics in California, the high-tech hubs of Israel, or the sunny, unregulated markets of Ukraine. Yet, for nearly two decades, one of its most significant, complex, and ethically fraught nerve centers existed not in a Western metropolis, but in the modest, congested bylanes of Dum Dum, West Bengal. Once a quiet colonial cantonment town known for its ammunition factory, Dum Dum transformed in the early 21st century into an unlikely global capital of commercial surrogacy. This essay explores the rise, the lived reality, and the eventual decline of surrogacy in Dum Dum, using its unique trajectory as a lens to examine the profound tensions between medical technology, economic desperation, women’s autonomy, and the heavy hand of the law. surrogacy in dum dum
Surrogacy is a legal medical arrangement where a surrogate mother carries a child for intended parents. In Dum Dum, this process is strictly governed by the , which mandates an altruistic model . This means that commercial surrogacy—where a surrogate is paid for her services—is prohibited. Instead, the intended parents are responsible for medical expenses, insurance, and pregnancy-related costs. Clinics in the area began operating as full-service agencies
Yet, a deeper investigation reveals a more troubling picture. Studies conducted by Kolkata-based sociologists found that informed consent was often nominal. Many women had limited literacy, did not fully understand the medical risks of IVF (including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome or the trauma of a Caesarean section), and were heavily influenced by husbands or mothers-in-law who viewed their wombs as family assets. The contracts, written in English, were rarely translated comprehensively into Bengali or Hindi. Furthermore, the psychological toll was immense. Women spoke of profound grief after being forced to hand over the newborn immediately after birth—an act of separation that many likened to a living death. The "happy surrogate" holding a thank-you card from a foreign couple was a carefully curated photograph, obscuring the months of isolation, physical pain, and unresolved emotional trauma. In the popular imagination, the global fertility industry
The surrogacy industry in Dum Dum thrived in the shadows of legal ambiguity until the late 2010s, when a series of international scandals forced the Indian government to act. The most infamous involved a Japanese couple, Ikufumi and Yuki Yamada, who commissioned a child through an IRM surrogate. Before the baby was born, the couple divorced. Neither parent wanted the child. The baby, nicknamed "Baby Manji" after a character in a manga, was born in Dum Dum and became a stateless orphan, trapped for over a year in a legal battle over nationality, custody, and citizenship. The case traveled to the Indian Supreme Court and made headlines worldwide, exposing the terrifying legal vacuum: there was no law determining who was the legal parent of a child born to an Indian surrogate for foreign nationals.
A just future requires a third path: robust international frameworks that guarantee informed consent, fair compensation, psychological support, and legal parentage rights for the child—without economic coercion. Until then, the silent cradles of Dum Dum will continue to whisper a difficult truth: that the womb is not a factory, and the child born from such labor deserves a world that values the dignity of both the carrier and the carried. The ghosts of Baby Manji and the thousands of anonymous surrogates still haunt those bylanes, reminding us that in the marketplace of motherhood, the most vulnerable always pay the highest price.
Today, the surrogacy hostels of Dum Dum stand silent or have been converted into cheap paying guest accommodations. The IRM continues to operate, but its international surrogacy wing is shuttered. The law, ostensibly designed to protect women from exploitation, had a perverse effect. It did not eliminate the demand for surrogacy, nor did it address the poverty that drove women to offer their wombs. Instead, it drove the industry underground or across borders to unregulated clinics in Georgia, Kenya, or Mexico. The women of Dum Dum who once saw surrogacy as their only escape route have returned to the informal economy—pounding bricks at construction sites, rolling beedis, or begging.