Thoughts on the international day for the elderly

International day for the elderly is celebrated (1st October) with familiar vivaciousness, as is the wont with the articulate segment of our elite.

Functions are organized by voluntary organizations, felicitations offered to some senior citizens who happen to be zoomed in by the organizers. Statements emanate from the pulpit dispelling the gloom supposed to have been condensing like mist during the evening of the life of elderly. Indian society at large, one is assured, has not really lost its conscience, despite the claims by those given to contrarian thinking. After all

○       children (many) are accommodating their parents in cramped small urban dwellings despite loss of privacy and adjusting to other inconveniences (it is not as if children always or as a rule have been leaving their old parents in the lurch), some showing due concern about their deteriorating health and managing many acute or chronic health problems providing financial and physical help;

○       children (quite a few settled abroad or dislocated from parental home due to job or career compulsions) are supporting their parents with generous outstation financial helps for them to live a life of dignity and conveniences or opt to live as a community in some of the better or new-age old age homes sporting facilities, gadgets, environs displaying considerable geriatric sensitivity;

○       government is seriously cogitating about bringing out a well thought out policy (National Programme for Health Care of Elderly or NPHCE) for the senior citizens, funds being sanctioned to medical institutions for starting geriatric wards, training and sensitizing of doctors and nurses and other medicare providers about the special needs of elderly patients and appropriate treatment protocols;

○       helplines, advocacy groups and blogs are mushrooming, volunteering useful information for the elderly – the dos and don’ts, financial and medical advice (practice of Yoga and alternative medicine), psychological and semi-philosophical inputs about dealing with hostile situations at home and elsewhere, helps in the pursuit of hobbies, social networking on internet (if nowhere else), etc;

○       gerontology is slowly and surely on the way to become recognized as a serious subject of study and research in the universities.

All of these sincere efforts of the concerned relatives, citizens and the government are commendable and are, hopefully, going to gather momentum in days to come. There were about 76 million 60-plus people at the time of 2001 census constituting about 7.7% of the total population and at this rate the absolute number may grow to about 133 million by 2021 and 179 million by 2031. The rate at which the numbers are growing always look like overwhelming whatever timid ameliorating steps that NGOs and the government may be taking, amid their hundreds of other pressing commitments. This is especially true about the gaps characteristic of the government policies and their implementation through various levels of government. The ever-present corruption might eventually, like in the case of many other government programmes, leave little resources at the service delivery points (think of geriatric wards in government nominated hospitals with few trained doctors or other medicare professionals, lack of supply or pilferage of specially recommended medicines for geriatric patients).

The targeting of the sections of senior citizen population deserving subsidized medical services (including medicines) is likely, sooner than later, to be mired in the usual sterile ideological debate on the entitlement of the poor and the weaker sections vis-à-vis government fiscal deficit that we are witnessing in the case of food and/or fuel. This country has developed a critical mass of reform-clad politicians, bureaucrats, corporate honchos, liberalization-fundamentalists whose animal entrepreneurial spirit (hence India’s famed growth sense), the prime minister often fears, might be dampened if offer of free lunch (of even rotting grains inside or outside of FCI warehouses) is so much as conceptualized let alone put into practice.

There is no denying that useful services are reaching at least some old and infirm people, lifting them from penury and destitution, providing them with food and shelter thanks to the initiatives taken by NGOs (many funded as a result of private effusions of kindness, tax-saving wisdom and, dare one say in today’s morally ambiguous world, laundering of some sort or other ulterior motives). Perhaps it is not always easy to strike a balance between the noble ends and dubious means.