Gujarat, March 20:

Daksha, a shy Gujarati woman in her early 30s, wants a child — but not for herself. The baby is for the ‘Britishers’, the couple seated in the lobby of the Indian fertility clinic.

It is the first time that the British Asian couple, Ajay and Saroj Shah, from Leicester in central England, have met Daksha. The 31-year-old is ‘loaning’ her womb to them for Rs 150,000 Indian Currency (IC) (2,000 pounds) and is candid about needing the money. Her shop job pays only Rs 2,000 IC a month. She says her friend was a surrogate mother. “She was paid well. I am not rich so the money will help me a lot. I have no problem bringing joy to this family. I do not need another child. I have two of my own.” For the Shahs, who have spent six years and 60,000 pounds on fertility treatment in Britain with little success, the mixture of money, science and light regulation in India has reignited the hope that they will finally have children.

The British couple appear to be part of a flourishing trade in reproductive tourism in India, which has a more relaxed attitude to paying women for pregnancy, a practice prohibited in many other countries.

Indian clinics report that the incidence of surrogacy has more than doubled in the past three years, with the demand driven by fertility requests from abroad and the decision by some professional women to delay trying for a family until their late 30s.

The treatment is becoming big business in India and is worth about Rs 20 billion IC a year. The increase in requests from abroad is partly fuelled by the relatively cheap costs. At about 3,000 pounds in Britain, an IVF cycle costs five times what you might pay in India. In addition, in Britain, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has outlawed payments, but a surrogate can be reimbursed for a maximum of 10,000 pounds to cover expenses; the payments often fall between 4,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds.

India’s newspapers have highlighted the trend with reports of couples from Europe and east Asia making flying visits in search of surrogate mothers. One case picked up by papers concerned Lin and David Lee, a Singaporean couple, who compared California prices — in their case for egg donor, fertilisation and surrogate payment — with the costs in Mumbai. They opted for the Indian clinics to save Rs 2.5 million IC (31,000 pounds). The Lees are now expecting a baby through a local surrogate.

The Shahs, who are both in their 40s, decided to turn to surrogacy when British doctors told Mrs Shah that she could not bear children. The couple had not considered India, until they began to find it difficult to get an Asian egg donor in Britain.

“We were at the desperate stage, both of us are not getting younger,” says Shah, “We met a doctor from India who came to give a talk about surrogacy. She said it is easier to get an Asian donor here. So we decided to give it a try.” Six months later the couple attended Kaivla hospital, in Anand, in the west Indian state of Gujarat — a hospital that has found seven surrogate mothers in the past 18 months for British and American couples of Indian descent.

The clinic finds surrogates and matches them with prospective parents in India and overseas. Doctors track the progress of the surrogates and keep the paying couples informed.