No country for the old
Sixty-plus is India’s fastest growing demographic. Yet, public policy largely ignores the elderly, writes Akshi Chawla
Sixty-plus is India’s fastest growing demographic. Yet, public policy largely ignores the elderly, writes Akshi Chawla
Kisturi Devi, 62, lives with her two daughters-in-law and nine grandchildren in Ballana village of Alwar district in Rajasthan. All three women are widowed. Since 2013, Devi has been receiving an old-age pension of ~500 per month — half the amount that would qualify her as living below the poverty line of ~32 per day in rural India.
Nearly one in 10 Indians is over 60 years old, a fact often lost amid the economic bombast of India’s ‘demographic dividend’.
Devi is among India’s 100 million elderly people, numerous enough to form one of the 15 most populous countries in the world. This number is set to grow at the fastest pace among all demographic groups—while India’s overall population is likely to grow by 55 per cent between 2000 and 2050, the corresponding figures for the 60+ and 80+ age groups are 326 per cent and 700 per cent.
Yet, as Devi’s case makes clear, the majority of India’s aged subsist on meagre support from the government. The family continues to be seen as the ‘normal’ site for the care of the elderly, even as factors such as decreasing family size, migration of the young for work and abuse within the family make this a less than ideal situation.
Many elderly people live alone–the majority of them women—and are easy targets of crime. Residential homes are not yet a viable alternative. Only the economically privileged can afford private homes, and government ones are few and far between. The elderly in numbers Roughly 9 per cent of India’s population is aged 60 years or more, as per Census figures from 2011, as opposed to 12 per cent globally. By 2050, the 60+ age group is expected to form 19 per cent of India’s population.
Kerala, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana are the top five states where the elderly comprise 10 per cent or more of the population, while the north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Assam have the smallest proportion of people aged 60 or more.
Caring for the elderly is a Directive Principle of State Policy under Article 41 of the Constitution, which states: “The State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want.” Meagre financial support In Khanpatla village of Panchmahal district of of Gujarat, Ranchhodbhai, 65, and his wife Gangaben, 63, have been enrolled as beneficiaries under the state government’s old-age pension scheme since the last two years. This entitles them to ~400 each per month, but they said they have not received a pension for nearly nine months. This delay is not new, they said, and in any case it hardly covers their bare minimum survival needs.
The Indian government has been providing social pensions under the National Social Assistance Programme since 1995. In 2007, the programme was reintroduced as the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) for elderly people who belong to a below-poverty-line household. The central government contributes ~200 per month towards pension for each person aged 60 years or above and ~500 per month for everyone aged 80 years and above. State governments are expected to supplement this with at least a matching sum.
The draft National Policy for Senior Citizens of 2011 recommended an amount of ~1,000 as monthly pension under IGNOAPS. Although the policy has not yet been finalised, some states have increased their contribution to comply with this recommendation. By and large, pensions in most states remain meagre, varying from ~200 in Assam and Nagaland to ~250 in Mizoram, ~400 in Bihar and Gujarat, and ~500 in Rajasthan and Punjab. Consequently, lakhs of elderly citizens live in penury.
An ongoing public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court demands a basic old-age pension of ~2,000 per month. “This ~200 was fixed years ago and it has no relevance to the cost of living today,” Ashwani Kumar, former Union Minister of Law and Justice, who has filed the PIL, told IndiaSpend.
In a survey by the socio-economic advocacy group Centre for Equity Studies, pension beneficiaries said amounts of ~1,600 to ~2,000 were “adequate”. A study published in the HelpAge IndiaResearch & Development Journalin 2013 had calculated that providing a pension of ~2,000 to 90 percent of India’s elderly would cost 1.81 per cent of the GDP; a pension of ~1,000 would cost less than 1 per cent of the GDP.
As per the National Social Assistance Programme website, millions of the elderly receive old-age pension. This makes them an attractive vote-bank during elections, when the pension amount becomes an important issue and finds mention in several election manifestos. Yet, despite successive elections, this wooing of the elderly voter has not translated into a dignified pension amount in a majority of Indian states. Difficult to access Not only are pensions small, the elderly also have to contend with ambiguous processes and unhelpful and rude staff. “My life as a citizen gets affected by the lowest level in the hierarchy I deal with,” Anupama Datta, director of Policy Research and Development at the non-profit HelpAge India, told IndiaSpend, adding that often sympathetic and well-meaning senior officials are unable to infuse the same attitude lower down in the system.
The residents of Gharaunda, an old-age home in Fatehpur Beri, Delhi, shared with IndiaSpend the many challenges they face when applying for a pension. Renuka, 71, who goes by her first name only, hails from Bihar. She wanted to enrol for the Delhi government’s old-age pension after she moved into Gharaunda but did not have local residential proof since all her earlier documents were from her native state. When she visited a government office to apply for local identity documents, she was turned away saying she did not need an identity proof “at her age”.
Lack of empathy and support is evident in other ways too. Neelam Mohan, chairperson and founder-trustee of Panchvati, a private old-age home in Delhi’s Tughlakabad, told IndiaSpend about her ongoing and thus-far futile struggle to get the entry road to their home cleared because ambulances and water tankers could not come in. More elderly living alone The murder of an elderly couple who were living by themselves in Delhi’s Ashok Vihar in early September 2017 was widely reported. The suspect was a male nurse they had hired and who fled when the incident came to light.
A few months ago, a 22-year-old man had been convicted by a local court for the rape and murder of an 81-year-old widow who lived alone. Crimes against the elderly warrant special attention, and the National Crime Records Bureau has started including a separate chapter on ‘Crime against Senior Citizens’ in its annual publication since 2014. The number of crimes has risen by 9.7 per cent in just the two years for which data are available—18,714 cases were reported under the Indian Penal Code in 2014, which increased to 20,532 in 2015.
Maharashtra reported the highest incidence of crime—in absolute numbers—followed by Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Mapping the data reveals a higher incidence of crime against the elderly in the southern parts of the country.
Living with family may not, however, necessarily be the solution, even though families have traditionally been expected to care for their elderly. Half the respondents surveyed by HelpAge India for its report on Elderly Abuse in 2014 reported having faced some form of abuse. The figure had nearly doubled from 23 per cent respondents reporting abuse in the previous year’s survey. Most of those abused lived with their families, and the daughter-in-law and son emerged as the most likely to inflict abuse. Residential homes Residential homes for the elderly are one option. The Draft National Policy of 2011 recommends setting up “homes with assisted living facilities for abandoned senior citizens” in every district and providing adequate budgetary support for the same.
An IndiaSpend analysis of the latest data on the Ministry of Social Justice’s website shows that the 500-odd projects supported by the ministry were concentrated in 215 of India’s 700plus districts. Several of these were marked as “Discontinued” or “Blacklisted”.
In the four financial years from 2012-13 to 2015-16, the central government released a little over ~47 crore to all states to support old-age homes. In some years, this amounted to ~400,000 per home, or ~33,000 a month, for homes that would cater to lodging, food and other facilities for numerous residents. Policy blind spot The few times the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) has addressed the elderly question, the discussion has been restricted to three or four talking points—mostly an overview of IGNOAPS and the Integrated Programme for the Older Persons, under which grants are given for the running and maintenance of old-age homes, daycare centres, etc., and the funds released for these.
There has been “not a single debate”, Datta
Living with family may not necessarily be the best solution, even though families have traditionally been expected to care for their elderly