A bunch of 22 pregnant women are anxiously waiting to deliver, though without any other emotion attached to the new arrivals.
Staying away from their families in a residential building on Sohna Road, Gurgaon, hard cash is their only need - and hope.
Hailing from various industrial zones in and around the Capital, these women are the new wombs-for-hire pool in India.
A major reason why these areas have become a fertile ground for the surrogacy industry is the poor social and financial status of the labour force.
Surrogate mothers get paid between Rs 2.75 lakh and Rs 3 lakh at Vansh Surrogacy Consultants, which claims to be the first surrogacy home in Gurgaon.
Surrogates often receive more money than promised. If a mother conceives twins, the compensation amount increases.
Surrogacy consultants find easy availability of rent-a-womb women in the NCR’s industrial hubs to service their clients.
Several reasons
The surrogates have an array of reasons to rent out their wombs, including making money for the future or getting treatment for an ailing family member.
Geeta, a surrogate mother who has recently delivered twins for an IAS officer who was childless for 14 years, needed the money after her husband was diagnosed with cancer. It required long-term treatment in a hospital, which would cost more than Rs 2 lakh.
Geeta paid the hospital expenses with the amount she earned from renting out her womb.
“My husband works in a factory in Delhi. It was anyway difficult for us to run the house with his meagre salary, and then he was diagnosed with cancer. We hardly had any money, so I opted for surrogacy. We managed the interim with our small savings. After my delivery, my husband underwent the surgery,” she added
