Curse of old age

A report in this newspaper has pointed to the sordid undertow of that grand celebration of the spiritual, the Mahakumbh. Many sons and daughters who came to cast away their sins at the mela have left behind their elderly mothers and other aged, mostly female, relatives. These abandoned women are the lost who, in defiance of that winning formula that spawned many a Bollywood blockbuster of an earlier time, will never be found. Long after the crowds have dispersed and people have returned to their homes and lives-as-usual, these women, afflicted with poverty and old age, with arthritis and asthma, will linger on in the hope against hope that somebody, a loved one, will come for them. They will finally be sent to spend the rest of their lives in the anonymity of an old age home. For most of them, this desertion at the Mahakumbh is likely to bring no moment of dramatic revelation. It is only the final reiteration of a daily abandonment.

This is not about just the 10,000 women left behind in the shelter in Kumbhnagar. It is also about the millions of people who are leading marginalised invisible lives in old age homes or even within their own homes — because they are old, because they have outlived their "utility". The average life expectancy at birth in our country has gone up manifold due to better health facilities — from 32 at the time of Independence to 62 in the 90s. But with the breakdown of traditional family support structures and in the absence of alternative social security nets taking their place, this enhanced longevity threatens to become a curse for most of its beneficiaries. According to a study by Helpage, there are a total of 70 million old people in India above 60 years of age. Of them, 40 per cent live below the poverty line, and 55 per cent of the women are widows over 60 and without any support. For widows, of course, there has never been any succour even within the embrace of family and tradition. Despitehalf-hearted sporadic efforts at social reform, widows continue to be forced to lead timid lives within their own homes when they are not packed off to Varanasi or Mathura to languish in piety and homelessness until they die.

It is not just insensitivity that lies at the root of the vulnerability of the widow or the old parent in our system, but also the lack of enabling laws. To date there is no legislation governing matrimonial property in the country, for instance, and no way a wife can prevent her husband from disinheriting her by simply writing a will and bequeathing the entire property on his son or even a third party. A woman is denied co-guardianship rights over her children and the right to inherit ancestral property and wealth as a daughter. In the name of old age income security, there is nothing more than a gigantic system of provident funds, notorious for poor customer service and high administrative costs, where workers view the PF as tax and apply creative energies to evasion. Clearly, much more serious thought and sensitivity need to be given to strengthening the existing institutional mechanisms for old age security in India and to ensuring that its benefits are extended to encompass all those who languish outsideits pale, including those in the unorganised sector.