There were special celebrations when a baby boy was born at Chennai’s G.G. Hospital yesterday (August 27, 2008). And understandably so… given that it’s the country’s first reported instance of a birth resulting from a frozen egg and also given the minuscule 2% success rate for such deliveries.

In contrast, the success rate for freshly farmed eggs is said to be 43%. So, why would anyone want to freeze the eggs at all. Writing in the Medindia.com, when the ‘country’s first frozen oocyte pregnancy’ was reported from Chennai in February this year, Dr Reeja Tharu explains that it would be a boon for, among others, women who may prefer to delay having a baby. An egg farmed at age, say, 28 would remain that young even when it is used  by the women to enter pregnancy at, say, age 40. The advantage: the younger the egg, the healthier it is.

Women with pelvic diseases, ovarian dysfunction or premature ovarian failure can also opt for frozen eggs.

For a country that gave birth to its first test tube baby about 20 years ago, it has certainly been an eventful score – medically, ethically and financially!

Recently, the Guardian reported on “The fertility tourists” descending on India. These are women who arrive with frozen sperm, scout for an egg donor and, an IVF later, return home with the implanted embroys.

Besides being cheaper, India is also seen to be easy on the legal and ethical issues involved. Compared to the strictly regulated and monitored fertility treatments in a country like the UK, in India IVF is entirely self-regulated. Thus, while the UK may not allow more than three embroys for implantation, citing medical risks to mother and baby, in India doctors are ready to implant as many as five.

And who are the donors? “Healthy young fertile Indian women… who are superovulated exclusively for you”, as the online ads for such services put it. The Guardian contrasted the lives of two such donors — one in a Gujarat village who was paid Rs 5,600 each of the three times she donated so she could “provide more” to her two children; and another, a student, in Mumbai who didn’t inform her family but thought it no big deal to donate, as the Rs 20,000 she received would fund her requirement of new clothes and gadgets.

And the medical implications of “superovulating” the women to produce more eggs? No, we’re too busy with our “growth story” to worry about such side issues.

Meanwhile, in Anand (Gujarat), fabled for its cooperative movement that paid rich socioeconomic dividends, there is another story of cross-country cooperation but which went awry.

Little Manjhi finds herself in no-woman’s land barely a few weeks after her arrival on Planet Earth. Her surrogate Indian mother will have nothing to do with her, as was agreed upon. Her biological Japanese mother divorced before the baby’s birth and she doesn’t want the baby too. Manjhi’s Japanese father and grandmother definitely want her but they are being forced to first battle the laws(!) of our motherland.