Sohini and Mohan, both teenagers, lost their father to Covid-19 during India's first wave in 2020 and their mother to the second wave in 2021. The kids are being taken care of by their grandparents, who are not well off
These children are 'Covid orphans'
—a term increasingly being used in the media—and a reminder of other diseases that have led to children getting orphaned in large numbers, such as the Ebola outbreak and the HIV-AIDS crisis in Africa
In this first part of a two-part series, we examine India’s adoption laws and realities, and find that care by the extended family — and not adoption by strangers...