I REFER to the Saturday Special report, 'Cradle of the world'.

It provided a wonderful insight into the issue of 'wombs for rent'. The caste system in India has been the single most important reason for the high levels of poverty, social disparity and alienation of sections of society on the basis of something other than capability, for hundreds of years.

If impoverished women resort to renting their womb, it is a form of revolt and resistance against a society which, through the caste system, has denied opportunities to more than two-thirds of its population of over 1.2 billion, while the so-called forward castes have usurped these opportunities and continue to do so.

The service that Dr Nayna Patel provides as a 'social change agent' is laudable. She is leading poor women out of misery and poverty. Indian society has no right to judge if the practice of renting a womb is morally correct or not, as the caste system itself is morally wrong. In fact, everything that is not right about Indian society can be traced to the caste system. In India, people choose to do or not to do a job based on their caste, rather than their merit or competence.

For this reason, technology is feared as a social threat, as it threatens to break the caste barriers. Ridiculous as it may seem, the upper castes even resent mobile phones being owned by lower castes. In such a society, renting a womb is indeed blasphemy.

Steps such as wombs for rent are signs that the poor in India are willing to take action, even if it means treading close to the 'societal boundary' between the moral and immoral.

It is also debatable whether Dr Patel is exploiting medicine and science, or poor and desperate women. However, a society which has denied opportunities to its poor millions on the basis of caste has no locus standi to debate the issue.

Shankar Venkat

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