Manji Yamada, the 14-day-old child, in the incubator

Jaipur, Aug. 7: Manji Yamada doesn’t know what she has kicked off.

She can’t really, being in an incubator and just 14 days old.

But the birth of the Japanese baby, delivered by a surrogate mother and being breast-fed by another woman, has spawned a host of questions on the need for clear-cut surrogacy laws in India.

Manji’s parents, Ikofusi Yamada and Yuki, divorced after she was conceived. Now mother Yuki doesn’t want to take responsibility for the baby and father Ikofusi can’t take his daughter back to Japan because Indian adoption laws don’t allow a single man to adopt a girl child.

Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaisingh, who has taken up Manji’s case, however, pointed out that a father couldn’t adopt his own child.

There is another problem. As she was born in India, Manji is Indian but her parents are Japanese — which means problems in issuing a birth certificate and a passport.

Jaisingh, however, said she hoped the baby would be issued a birth certificate bearing her father’s name by tomorrow so she can travel to Japan soon with her dad and grandmother Emiko.

Jaisingh said under the International Convention of the Rights of the Child, a newborn has to be registered immediately after birth and has the right to a name and a nationality.

She said as both India and Japan were signatories to the UN convention, there shouldn’t be any difficulty in getting a birth certificate for Manji. Only the father’s name on the certificate would be enough to issue her travel documents which, she said, hold the same value as a passport.

Dr Nayna H. Patel of Akanksha Infertility and IVF hospital, Gujarat, said the couple had come to her nine months back, but Yuki did not provide her eggs, which came from an anonymous Indian donor.

Manji, however, isn’t short of motherly affection. Shweta, the wife of a friend of Ikofusi, who gave birth to a daughter on Tuesday, is breast-feeding her own child and Manji.