A human Larry Lucas, who has a rare illness and is disabled, began collecting old bikes that needed work. He did the repairs and then donated them to Toys for Tots. He spent about a year collecting them and working on them as he was able to, and ended up delivering 175 refurbished bikes to two Toys for Tots drop-off points.
Because he is unable to work, Larry lives off disability checks and pulled this off with little money. Also, he is frequently ill, so he was able to do the repair work only when he was physically up for it. (COURTESY rd.com)
CRITICISM - When we sincierly try to help others in society, we will find a way to achieve it.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Respect for Others
Respect for others is based on self-respect. It really is following the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It is the value that makes the world a more decent and civilized place.
You can show respect in many ways. You speak politely and don’t hurt people’s feelings by saying unkind things or making fun of them. You show good manners and care about other people. You treat others fairly and you think it is good to share.
You know how to show tolerance to people who share different beliefs.
As a respectful person, you see everyone as a person with rights, regardless of their race, sex, age or ethnic group.
CRITICISM - I came across so many websites, people will enjoy with filthy language by writing comments. Please look back what you wrote there once again.
You can show respect in many ways. You speak politely and don’t hurt people’s feelings by saying unkind things or making fun of them. You show good manners and care about other people. You treat others fairly and you think it is good to share.
You know how to show tolerance to people who share different beliefs.
As a respectful person, you see everyone as a person with rights, regardless of their race, sex, age or ethnic group.
CRITICISM - I came across so many websites, people will enjoy with filthy language by writing comments. Please look back what you wrote there once again.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Super cop Manzil Saini
She switched careers to become a cop - that too after marriage - and went on to unearth the sensational kidney racket on the outskirts of the capital.
But Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Manzil Saini says the family support she got in order to be successful is lacking in the case of most Indian women.
"I have been able to succeed as my father never compromised with my studies. But the same is not true for a majority of women in the country. And this thinking needs to be changed," Saini said.
A science graduate and a gold medallist from the Delhi School of Economics, the daughter of a cop had worked with private firms for nearly three years before joining the elite Indian Police Service (IPS).
Defying the cliché that a woman's career comes to an end after marriage, Saini made the transition from a marketing executive to a cop trailing criminals after marrying into a business family.
"Initially my family was sceptical about whether I would be able to cope up with the pressures of the job, but seeing my dedication they supported me completely," Saini said.
"After my marriage and becoming a mother, I started preparing for civil services and succeeded in getting through in the first attempt. Whenever I studied I gave my 100 percent so that I could spend quality time with my child," she said.
Saini, an IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, was the only married woman with a kid among eight other women in the 2005 batch.
"I sort of surprised everybody by becoming the best athlete in my batch," she quipped.
Saini got her first posting as ASP, Moradabad, after two years of training. Her stint with fame came when she unearthed the high-profile kidney racket in the first six months of her service following a labourer's complaint.
Subsequent to the revelation, she was all over the national and international media giving briefs of developments in the case.
"It was like any other complaint from a small time labourer about the removal of his kidney two years ago. We were not aware that we were trailing a well-ensconced racket.
"When we conducted searches at places in Meerut and Gurgaon, the skeletons in the cupboard came tumbling out and with the arrest of (kingpin) Amit Kumar's aide Upendra Kumar everything fell into perspective."
She smoothly juggles her profession and family. From late night patrolling in her area to attending the parent-teacher meetings of her children, she manages it all.
Being from the fairer sex, 32-year-old Saini has had to prove her prowess to handle tough cases time and again.
"Many a time, being a woman, I have been asked by my seniors to go for soft tasks so that I can spend time with my family. But my current senior superintendent of police supported me during the probe of the kidney racket. So it differs from person to person," she said.
According to her, Indian society's view on women impedes their progress.
"During the 'mohalla' (colony) meetings, women never turn up despite my repeated requests. It is very hard to get them out of their houses to voice their concerns to police," she said.
CRITICISM - I posted this story to get inspired by her career, atleast by reading this story some one will get a good motivation.
But Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Manzil Saini says the family support she got in order to be successful is lacking in the case of most Indian women.
"I have been able to succeed as my father never compromised with my studies. But the same is not true for a majority of women in the country. And this thinking needs to be changed," Saini said.
A science graduate and a gold medallist from the Delhi School of Economics, the daughter of a cop had worked with private firms for nearly three years before joining the elite Indian Police Service (IPS).
Defying the cliché that a woman's career comes to an end after marriage, Saini made the transition from a marketing executive to a cop trailing criminals after marrying into a business family.
"Initially my family was sceptical about whether I would be able to cope up with the pressures of the job, but seeing my dedication they supported me completely," Saini said.
"After my marriage and becoming a mother, I started preparing for civil services and succeeded in getting through in the first attempt. Whenever I studied I gave my 100 percent so that I could spend quality time with my child," she said.
Saini, an IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, was the only married woman with a kid among eight other women in the 2005 batch.
"I sort of surprised everybody by becoming the best athlete in my batch," she quipped.
Saini got her first posting as ASP, Moradabad, after two years of training. Her stint with fame came when she unearthed the high-profile kidney racket in the first six months of her service following a labourer's complaint.
Subsequent to the revelation, she was all over the national and international media giving briefs of developments in the case.
"It was like any other complaint from a small time labourer about the removal of his kidney two years ago. We were not aware that we were trailing a well-ensconced racket.
"When we conducted searches at places in Meerut and Gurgaon, the skeletons in the cupboard came tumbling out and with the arrest of (kingpin) Amit Kumar's aide Upendra Kumar everything fell into perspective."
She smoothly juggles her profession and family. From late night patrolling in her area to attending the parent-teacher meetings of her children, she manages it all.
Being from the fairer sex, 32-year-old Saini has had to prove her prowess to handle tough cases time and again.
"Many a time, being a woman, I have been asked by my seniors to go for soft tasks so that I can spend time with my family. But my current senior superintendent of police supported me during the probe of the kidney racket. So it differs from person to person," she said.
According to her, Indian society's view on women impedes their progress.
"During the 'mohalla' (colony) meetings, women never turn up despite my repeated requests. It is very hard to get them out of their houses to voice their concerns to police," she said.
CRITICISM - I posted this story to get inspired by her career, atleast by reading this story some one will get a good motivation.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Moral studies in schools
Increasing numbers of people across the ideological spectrum believe that our society is in deep moral trouble. The disheartening signs are everywhere: the breakdown of the family; the deterioration of civility in everyday life; rampant greed at a time when one in five children is poor; an omnipresent sexual culture that fills our television and movie screens with sleaze, beckoning the young toward sexual activity at ever earlier ages; the enormous betrayal of children through sexual abuse; and the 1992 report of the National Research Council that says the United States is now the most violent of all industrialized nations. (COURTESY: http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/)
CRITICISM - People should believe strongly in injecting more and more moral values into our families.
CRITICISM - People should believe strongly in injecting more and more moral values into our families.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Woman for freedom
Aung San Suu Kyi, the eponymous ‘lady’ is leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma, which won a landslide election victory in 1990, but has never been allowed to govern. Suu Kyi was in Burma to nurse her critically ill mother in 1988. When she arrived in Rangoon, Burma was in political upheaval. Burmese people took to the streets in protest against military rule and demanded democratic reform. “I could not as my father’s daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on”, she said during a speech in 1988.
The daughter of Burma’s independence hero General Aung San, and inspired by the non – violent campaigns of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and India’s Mahatma Gandhi, Suu Kyi organised rallies and travelled around the country, calling for peaceful democratic reform and free elections. The protests and rallies were brutally suppressed by the army and Aung San Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest.
Since then, as the courageous leader of a campaign against one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, she has spent almost eleven years under house arrest. She isn't allowed to see her two sons, grandchildren, family, friends or colleagues as all visitors are banned. Her phone line is cut and her post is intercepted. In 1999 Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris died of cancer - the Burmese authorities refusing her a visit from him prior to his death. They have two children, Alexander and Kim. Many of her supporters have been jailed or killed, notably in the Depayin massacre of May 2003, when up to a hundred were beaten to death by the Burmese militia. The military junta’s policies have led to an approximated 1100 political prisoners and up to one million people internally displaced.
Suu Kyi has called for people around the world to join the struggle for freedom in Burma. In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, she has won the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. (COURTESY - www.burmacampaign.org.uk)
CRITICISM - Where is freedom for woman? At least will there be any freedom or independence given for woman around us. There is no meaning in celebrating world's woman day by keeping woman as house workers.
The daughter of Burma’s independence hero General Aung San, and inspired by the non – violent campaigns of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and India’s Mahatma Gandhi, Suu Kyi organised rallies and travelled around the country, calling for peaceful democratic reform and free elections. The protests and rallies were brutally suppressed by the army and Aung San Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest.
Since then, as the courageous leader of a campaign against one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, she has spent almost eleven years under house arrest. She isn't allowed to see her two sons, grandchildren, family, friends or colleagues as all visitors are banned. Her phone line is cut and her post is intercepted. In 1999 Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris died of cancer - the Burmese authorities refusing her a visit from him prior to his death. They have two children, Alexander and Kim. Many of her supporters have been jailed or killed, notably in the Depayin massacre of May 2003, when up to a hundred were beaten to death by the Burmese militia. The military junta’s policies have led to an approximated 1100 political prisoners and up to one million people internally displaced.
Suu Kyi has called for people around the world to join the struggle for freedom in Burma. In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, she has won the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. (COURTESY - www.burmacampaign.org.uk)
CRITICISM - Where is freedom for woman? At least will there be any freedom or independence given for woman around us. There is no meaning in celebrating world's woman day by keeping woman as house workers.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Nation that kills talent
Education, Bertrand Russell remarked, is the key to the new world. In our political discourse, clichés regarding our children being the future of the nation, youth power, and India's burgeoning 'youth bulge' abound; but the profile of this great potential engine of growth and, more significantly, of civilisational development, is, with small exceptions, distressing. The circumstances within which our children and our youth are being brought up and educated reflect the most deplorable waste, indeed, destruction, of talent, of aspirations and of natural potential.
Over the past months, India's youth have been projected in stark relief through the media in circumstances that have been personally tragic for the protagonists, as in the current controversy over drug use among the affluent and powerful, or fruitlessly polarised, as in the unnecessarily provoked anti and pro-reservation demonstrations. These are certainly not the images that India, as a nation, would be tempted to project and publicise, and these are far from the worst aspects of the country's profile of youth.
The image that pleases us most at present is a tiny pool of dynamic youngsters coming out of a handful of premier educational institutions in the country, burning a trail of success in the IT, technical and business sectors, fuelling national 'great power' ambitions and creating small islands of great productivity and wealth in booming urban economies. This young population has certainly given the country much power and pride. But even this segment, overwhelmingly, is a class without significant social consciousness or commitment, seeking personal goals and personal advantage wherever (and often by whatever means) these can be found. This, nevertheless, is the tiny but dynamic fragment of India's vast population of youth.
Beyond them lies darkness.
Within what passes for the young 'elite', we find a significant population of the idle rich, conscienceless parasites who fuel the economy of corruption, crime and prurience in their frenetic search for titillation and endless, illusory, diversion. Then we have a generation of privileged inheritors, who lay claim to their parental legacies - financial and political - with little preparation or aptitude, but with great arrogance and sense of entitlement. Not all inheritors are, of course, sybaritic wastrels, and there is a small cohort among the privileged classes who have built enormously on their inherited legacies - but these remain the exceptions. Even among them, however, there is little vision. Their education has been practical or ornamental; seldom social or moral.
There are, of course, the middle classes and the fortunate few among the poor who are able, through a quirk of circumstances, to break through near-insurmountable barriers to acquire an education that allows them to become productive members of the community. In the main, however, their vision is exhausted by the imperatives of building the narrow material base of comfortable living that is the natural ambition of any among the first-generation that secures access to a modicum of affluence.
This is the minuscule human resource base - no more than a few hundreds of thousands among the many millions of children and youth in India - that currently has access to a meaningful education, one that prepares them for productive employment in the modern economy. As for the rest, there is the despair and hopelessness of most village or Government schools, the permanent lack of skills, and a lifetime of uncertainty and apprehension on the forgotten margins of the economy. Many among them are joining the thuggeries of the extreme Left, the lumpen support-base of other political parties or movements, or the widening sphere of crime and disorder in the country. For the rest, there is only the consolation of fatalism or the dead-end of hopelessness.
From time to time, these millions are cheated with a false offer of special access to the better institutions in the country through reservations. But few of them have the capacities to cope, even if such access is provided at the expense of others, who are then left out. This may answer to some notion of 'social justice', but reflects a certain and personal injustice to those who are denied opportunities. In the interim, there is a precipitous decline in the entire educational infrastructure at all levels that has little to do with the controversy over reservations, but reflects "a much bigger crisis" in which India's premier institutions increasingly fail to secure candidates who meet their minimal standards for admission.
This much bigger crisis must secure the most urgent and massive attention if India is not only to maintain its current trends of growth, but indeed, even to survive. Absent a tremendous expansion of the educational infrastructure at all levels, and its most fundamental transformation in terms of the quality and content of instruction imparted and of facilities, tools and opportunities available, the entire network of national enterprises will be systematically eroded, and will eventually collapse. The future of a modern nation is defined by her schools, her universities, her technical institutions, her capacities to produce human resources with contemporary skill and abilities, and to create a visionary leadership that can mould the coming age. But this idea and these objectives have been lost in the cacophony of needless political debate rooted in ignorance.
The truth is, the ideal of an educated democracy, so powerfully articulated by Jawaharlal Nehru in the early years of Independence, appears to have been comprehensively abandoned. The many and great educational centres he created, and on which India's present reputation as an intellectual powerhouse is based, are in decline, and in some cases, terminal. Few have been added to those that were created under his guiding hand, and it is increasingly the case that a decent education is available only to those who are able to pay a most exorbitant price.
The teaching profession, at one time perhaps the most honoured, is becoming the refuge of - at best - the lazy, the easygoing and the unmotivated; and - at worst - of unemployable incompetents, failures and scoundrels. It is useful to recall that, in the greatest civilisations of history - including India's own at its cultural zenith - teachers were honoured above all others, and even emperors bowed to their moral authority. It was this honour, this position of unmatched privilege that attracted the best minds into the profession, and that created the intellectual profile and vision that could shape and fulfil the potential of the successor generation.
Where the teacher is not honoured; where the school and the university become shops; where pedagogy becomes a ritual that is forgetful of its own purpose; and where the educational sector is thought of as secondary or subordinate, cultures, civilisations and nations perish. (COURTESY: http://www.satp.org)
CRITICISM - So we have to inject so much of morality, goodness, truthfulness, trustworth into this society to withstand against bad which is spreading like a virus in society.
Over the past months, India's youth have been projected in stark relief through the media in circumstances that have been personally tragic for the protagonists, as in the current controversy over drug use among the affluent and powerful, or fruitlessly polarised, as in the unnecessarily provoked anti and pro-reservation demonstrations. These are certainly not the images that India, as a nation, would be tempted to project and publicise, and these are far from the worst aspects of the country's profile of youth.
The image that pleases us most at present is a tiny pool of dynamic youngsters coming out of a handful of premier educational institutions in the country, burning a trail of success in the IT, technical and business sectors, fuelling national 'great power' ambitions and creating small islands of great productivity and wealth in booming urban economies. This young population has certainly given the country much power and pride. But even this segment, overwhelmingly, is a class without significant social consciousness or commitment, seeking personal goals and personal advantage wherever (and often by whatever means) these can be found. This, nevertheless, is the tiny but dynamic fragment of India's vast population of youth.
Beyond them lies darkness.
Within what passes for the young 'elite', we find a significant population of the idle rich, conscienceless parasites who fuel the economy of corruption, crime and prurience in their frenetic search for titillation and endless, illusory, diversion. Then we have a generation of privileged inheritors, who lay claim to their parental legacies - financial and political - with little preparation or aptitude, but with great arrogance and sense of entitlement. Not all inheritors are, of course, sybaritic wastrels, and there is a small cohort among the privileged classes who have built enormously on their inherited legacies - but these remain the exceptions. Even among them, however, there is little vision. Their education has been practical or ornamental; seldom social or moral.
There are, of course, the middle classes and the fortunate few among the poor who are able, through a quirk of circumstances, to break through near-insurmountable barriers to acquire an education that allows them to become productive members of the community. In the main, however, their vision is exhausted by the imperatives of building the narrow material base of comfortable living that is the natural ambition of any among the first-generation that secures access to a modicum of affluence.
This is the minuscule human resource base - no more than a few hundreds of thousands among the many millions of children and youth in India - that currently has access to a meaningful education, one that prepares them for productive employment in the modern economy. As for the rest, there is the despair and hopelessness of most village or Government schools, the permanent lack of skills, and a lifetime of uncertainty and apprehension on the forgotten margins of the economy. Many among them are joining the thuggeries of the extreme Left, the lumpen support-base of other political parties or movements, or the widening sphere of crime and disorder in the country. For the rest, there is only the consolation of fatalism or the dead-end of hopelessness.
From time to time, these millions are cheated with a false offer of special access to the better institutions in the country through reservations. But few of them have the capacities to cope, even if such access is provided at the expense of others, who are then left out. This may answer to some notion of 'social justice', but reflects a certain and personal injustice to those who are denied opportunities. In the interim, there is a precipitous decline in the entire educational infrastructure at all levels that has little to do with the controversy over reservations, but reflects "a much bigger crisis" in which India's premier institutions increasingly fail to secure candidates who meet their minimal standards for admission.
This much bigger crisis must secure the most urgent and massive attention if India is not only to maintain its current trends of growth, but indeed, even to survive. Absent a tremendous expansion of the educational infrastructure at all levels, and its most fundamental transformation in terms of the quality and content of instruction imparted and of facilities, tools and opportunities available, the entire network of national enterprises will be systematically eroded, and will eventually collapse. The future of a modern nation is defined by her schools, her universities, her technical institutions, her capacities to produce human resources with contemporary skill and abilities, and to create a visionary leadership that can mould the coming age. But this idea and these objectives have been lost in the cacophony of needless political debate rooted in ignorance.
The truth is, the ideal of an educated democracy, so powerfully articulated by Jawaharlal Nehru in the early years of Independence, appears to have been comprehensively abandoned. The many and great educational centres he created, and on which India's present reputation as an intellectual powerhouse is based, are in decline, and in some cases, terminal. Few have been added to those that were created under his guiding hand, and it is increasingly the case that a decent education is available only to those who are able to pay a most exorbitant price.
The teaching profession, at one time perhaps the most honoured, is becoming the refuge of - at best - the lazy, the easygoing and the unmotivated; and - at worst - of unemployable incompetents, failures and scoundrels. It is useful to recall that, in the greatest civilisations of history - including India's own at its cultural zenith - teachers were honoured above all others, and even emperors bowed to their moral authority. It was this honour, this position of unmatched privilege that attracted the best minds into the profession, and that created the intellectual profile and vision that could shape and fulfil the potential of the successor generation.
Where the teacher is not honoured; where the school and the university become shops; where pedagogy becomes a ritual that is forgetful of its own purpose; and where the educational sector is thought of as secondary or subordinate, cultures, civilisations and nations perish. (COURTESY: http://www.satp.org)
CRITICISM - So we have to inject so much of morality, goodness, truthfulness, trustworth into this society to withstand against bad which is spreading like a virus in society.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Wombs for rent in India
While medical ethicists continue to debate the morality of the practice, couples from the United States and elsewhere are increasingly turning to India for the ultimate outsource — surrogate mothers.
One such couple is Lisa and Brian Switzer. After spending seven years and $90,000 trying to get pregnant, the American couple last year engaged a surrogate in India to carry their child.
In July, they will return to India to await delivery of the twins the surrogate is carrying for them. They went to India for the same reason many corporations do — it’s cheaper.
“Truthfully, we just looked at the price of what it would cost,” Lisa Switzer told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Wednesday in New York.
In the United States, the couple said, they were told it would cost $80,000 for a surrogate pregnancy. In India, they will pay about $30,000, with $7,000 going to the surrogate and the rest to doctors and travel.
The Switzers married when she was 32 and he 28. By last year, as she was turning 40, they had given up hope of Lisa's getting pregnant and carrying a child herself. The final blow was being told that her uterus was not up to the task.
Before turning to India, they had planned to use Brian’s sister as a surrogate. She was eager to help, but before the procedure could be carried out, she was hit by a drunken driver in an auto accident and suffered back injuries that would prevent her from going through a pregnancy.
Money was tight, and the couple sold their home and Brian worked two jobs to pay for a surrogate pregnancy. With the price so high in the U.S., “We really had to find a viable solution that wasn’t as expensive as being in the United States,” Lisa Switzer told Lauer.
Some couples find clinics, which are located in every major Indian city, on their own. The Switzers found theirs through a service called Planet Hospital, one of several such agencies that match would-be parents with young Indian women for whom the income from one pregnancy is the equivalent of years of regular wages.
Some 35 percent of Indians subsist on less than $1 a day, and the annual per capita income in the country is around $500. Surrogates must have children of their own to ensure they are fully aware of what it takes to go through a pregnancy, and the money a woman can earn from a surrogacy can make an enormous difference to her own children.
BOOMING BUSINESS
Since the practice was legalized in India in 2002, it has grown into an industry estimated to be worth nearly $500 million. Critics say that the business is not regulated by the government and point to an infant mortality rate that is 69 times higher than it is in the United States.
Others are concerned that poor Indian women are being exploited.
The Switzers admitted to having their own doubts.
“I was skeptical, absolutely,” Brian Switzer said. “You’re looking at going halfway around the world, and anybody asking for money up-front for anything over the Internet is something you want to look at, because anybody can throw up a Web page and look legitimate.”
Their fears disappeared when they went to India and found highly trained doctors who spoke English and facilities that provided quality care for the women carrying babies for clients from around the world.
Lisa Switzer said that the infant mortality rate is misleading.
“That statistic is based on the entire nation, and many women in India do not have any health care whatsoever,” she said. “These surrogates have nutritionists, they have nurses they see every two weeks, I get ultrasounds all the time. The fear factor really went down when you really see what goes into their health.”
The downside, Brian Switzer said, is the distance that makes it impossible to be in personal contact with the surrogate.
“It is a bad thing, because we are a bit disconnected,” he said. “We can get e-mails and they’ll tell us she’s doing fine. We know she’s doing fine, but it would be nice to watch the baby grow and feel it kick.”
IT’S A (SECRET)!
Another thing they don’t know is the sex of their twins. In India, it is illegal to tell parents the gender of their baby, a law passed to prevent the selective abortion of female embryos.
“We’re still fighting over names,” Lisa Switzer laughed.
The twins are due in August, but the couple has been told they may arrive early, so they will travel to India in July to be present for the birth. Unlike in the United States, where surrogates may decide to keep the babies they have carried to term, surrogates in India sign away all rights to the babies.
CRITICISM - I strongly support this kind of help from Indian woman to other woman in the world. Doctors should help these woman who are in need of financial assistance with more generosity
One such couple is Lisa and Brian Switzer. After spending seven years and $90,000 trying to get pregnant, the American couple last year engaged a surrogate in India to carry their child.
In July, they will return to India to await delivery of the twins the surrogate is carrying for them. They went to India for the same reason many corporations do — it’s cheaper.
“Truthfully, we just looked at the price of what it would cost,” Lisa Switzer told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Wednesday in New York.
In the United States, the couple said, they were told it would cost $80,000 for a surrogate pregnancy. In India, they will pay about $30,000, with $7,000 going to the surrogate and the rest to doctors and travel.
The Switzers married when she was 32 and he 28. By last year, as she was turning 40, they had given up hope of Lisa's getting pregnant and carrying a child herself. The final blow was being told that her uterus was not up to the task.
Before turning to India, they had planned to use Brian’s sister as a surrogate. She was eager to help, but before the procedure could be carried out, she was hit by a drunken driver in an auto accident and suffered back injuries that would prevent her from going through a pregnancy.
Money was tight, and the couple sold their home and Brian worked two jobs to pay for a surrogate pregnancy. With the price so high in the U.S., “We really had to find a viable solution that wasn’t as expensive as being in the United States,” Lisa Switzer told Lauer.
Some couples find clinics, which are located in every major Indian city, on their own. The Switzers found theirs through a service called Planet Hospital, one of several such agencies that match would-be parents with young Indian women for whom the income from one pregnancy is the equivalent of years of regular wages.
Some 35 percent of Indians subsist on less than $1 a day, and the annual per capita income in the country is around $500. Surrogates must have children of their own to ensure they are fully aware of what it takes to go through a pregnancy, and the money a woman can earn from a surrogacy can make an enormous difference to her own children.
BOOMING BUSINESS
Since the practice was legalized in India in 2002, it has grown into an industry estimated to be worth nearly $500 million. Critics say that the business is not regulated by the government and point to an infant mortality rate that is 69 times higher than it is in the United States.
Others are concerned that poor Indian women are being exploited.
The Switzers admitted to having their own doubts.
“I was skeptical, absolutely,” Brian Switzer said. “You’re looking at going halfway around the world, and anybody asking for money up-front for anything over the Internet is something you want to look at, because anybody can throw up a Web page and look legitimate.”
Their fears disappeared when they went to India and found highly trained doctors who spoke English and facilities that provided quality care for the women carrying babies for clients from around the world.
Lisa Switzer said that the infant mortality rate is misleading.
“That statistic is based on the entire nation, and many women in India do not have any health care whatsoever,” she said. “These surrogates have nutritionists, they have nurses they see every two weeks, I get ultrasounds all the time. The fear factor really went down when you really see what goes into their health.”
The downside, Brian Switzer said, is the distance that makes it impossible to be in personal contact with the surrogate.
“It is a bad thing, because we are a bit disconnected,” he said. “We can get e-mails and they’ll tell us she’s doing fine. We know she’s doing fine, but it would be nice to watch the baby grow and feel it kick.”
IT’S A (SECRET)!
Another thing they don’t know is the sex of their twins. In India, it is illegal to tell parents the gender of their baby, a law passed to prevent the selective abortion of female embryos.
“We’re still fighting over names,” Lisa Switzer laughed.
The twins are due in August, but the couple has been told they may arrive early, so they will travel to India in July to be present for the birth. Unlike in the United States, where surrogates may decide to keep the babies they have carried to term, surrogates in India sign away all rights to the babies.
CRITICISM - I strongly support this kind of help from Indian woman to other woman in the world. Doctors should help these woman who are in need of financial assistance with more generosity
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