DEMOGRAPHIC DOWNSIDE
The famed ‘dividend’ is destined to age and India’s elderly population will grow dramatically by mid-century. While branded corporate eldercare is thriving, the welfare of senior citizens remains a quiet crisis
Even as branded corporate eldercare is thriving, the welfare of senior citizens remains in doubt
Dthe wind and chill of the Sundarbans delta, a group of about 30 men and women are huddled over a bonfire. They’re singing along to old, half-forgotten tunes. There’s some clapping, some camaraderie over whiskey glasses. This night out by the Matla river is the highlight of a short holiday for these septuagenarians and octogenarians, residents of Thikana Shimla, the Kolkata old-age home that organises these biannual retreats. It’s a welcome distraction from the debilitating effects of ageing, the aches and pains, the impaired hearing, the myopia, even dementia and depression.
For all the talk of India’s demographic dividend, its bulging youth population, the country is also greying rapidly. According to a 2016 report by the ministry for statistics and programme implementation, India has 103.9 million elderly, people above age 60, about 8.5 per cent of the population. These numbers are reliant on the 2011 census. The elderly population has grown at about 3.5 per cent per year, double the rate for the population as a whole; a 2014 report by the non-profit HelpAge India shows that while India will be the youngest country in the world by 2020, by 2050, as many as 325 million people, or 20 per cent of the population, will be ‘elderly’. While the overall population of India will have grown by about 40 per cent between 2006 and 2050, the report adds, the elderly population will have grown by 270 per cent.
What are the economic and social policies being put into place to tackle this exponential growth in India’s elderly population? “The life expectancy of those above 70 has increased by 18 per cent,” says S.P. Kinjawadekar, president of the All India Senior Citizens’ Confederation (AISCCON), “but it has not necessarily improved the quality of life.” The statistics ministry report shows that the old-age dependency ratio, a measure of the pressure on the economically productive section of the population, rose from 10.9 per cent in 1961 to 14.2 per cent in 2011. Though 41.6 per cent of the elderly population still works (with significant differences between rural and urban, men and women), few feel financially secure. The large majority of the elderly in the workforce are rural men (66.4 per cent over 60 work, compared to just 11.3 per cent urban men) and formal pension coverage is limited and largely inadequate. A 2016 survey by the Agewell Foundation with 15,000 rural and urban respondents showed 65 per cent reported themselves as either financially dependent or facing a financial crisis. Nearly 80 per cent of those in financial trouble said it was due to medical costs.
Meanwhile, a 2015-16 AISCCON survey shows that 60 per cent of elderly people living with their families face abuse and harassment, 66 per cent are either ‘very poor’ or below the poverty line and 39 per cent have been either abandoned or live alone. The associated mental health issues of living alone, especially for the elderly, are so serious that the United Kingdom appointed a Minister for Loneliness this January.
India spends just 1.2 per cent of its GDP on healthcare. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that by 2025, spending on healthcare as a proportion of GDP will rise to 2.5 per cent, a move the British medical journal Lancet said indicated a worrying “lack of ambition... when the global average for countries is about six per cent.” In the most recent budget, the government announced the Ayushman Bharat national health programme, promising health coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year, suggesting it under-