India’s Shadow Children

Stephanie was brought up in France in a French family, but her birth parents are Indian – she’s an intercountry adoptee. In the 1980s and 1990s thousands of babies, like Stephanie, were adopted from India into white, western families. Now, inter-country adoption is more regulated, and there’s a recognition that this is a practice open to abuse – several countries have banned it altogether.

In France, Stephanie grew up very happily with her adoptive mum and dad. But after they both died, she began to think more about her origins. And she experienced a desire to re-connect with her motherland. In this edition of Assignment, Stephanie journeys into rural India in the state of Maharashtra with journalist, Tanya Datta. Together they attempt to find Stephanie’s birth mother. Along the way, Stephanie discovers she isn’t an ‘absolutely abandoned and destitute child’ found on the roadside as she’s been led to believe her whole life, but was born to an unmarried teenager. Nearly 40 years later, will she find that 50-something woman?

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.