No Room at Home for Elderly in India

By Rick Westhead, The Toronto Star

April 18, 2009

India

Rita Sikand considers herself one of the lucky ones. At least the 90-year-old widow has a roof over her head, a private bedroom in the Har-mit old age home.

"I don't know where I would go if I wasn't here," Sikand says, brushing smooth the lace that fringes her blue summer dress. "Many old people don't have anywhere to go now."

After her husband died five years ago, Sikand's daughter and son-in-law moved into her home in New Delhi and it wasn't long before they took control of her bank account and car, and confined her to her bedroom. 

Abhijeet Chatterjee, a long-time family friend, intervened and became Sikand's legal guardian after a court battle that dragged on for more than a year. 

As India's population pushes past 1 billion, Sikand's situation highlights a challenge facing this country: in many family homes, there's no longer room for old people. 

Aid agencies working with the elderly say adult children increasingly are unwilling to have their aging parents live with them as they pursue jobs overseas or merely want more space for themselves. 

That leaves India facing a looming crisis. Estimates suggest there will be more than 100 million Indians aged 60 or older by 2013; the country has only 4,000 old-age homes.

"In the past, older people were respected and continued to be the head of the family even when they were frail and feeble," said Avtar Pennathur, who opened Har-mit in 2003. 

"Things have changed. For some people, family doesn't mean what it used to."

Sikand, the daughter of a Burmese forest ranger who has lived much of her life in New Delhi, moved into Har-mit after Chatterjee agreed to pay her monthly expenses.

Every day, Sikand wakes up and shuffles from her bedroom – decorated with a bright red Kashmiri carpet, old family photos and a wardrobe of homemade dresses – to a ground-floor dining room where local newspapers and a breakfast of bran biscuits, eggs, porridge and papaya await. 

Most days, she goes on outings to local art and music exhibitions or a temple or visits with students who drop by.

Without a benefactor, Sikand wouldn't have been able to afford a comfortable old-age home. In fact, many of the elderly can't make ends meet, depending solely on India's national pension plan, which pays about $15 a month, said Sonali Sharma, an official with HelpAge India, a non-profit agency that works on seniors issues. There is some talk about boosting that payment to $24 a month, she said.

"Our country has boomed over the past 20 years," Sharma said. "We've seen people migrate from villages to cities and from Indian cities to overseas in the pursuit of material goals. Sometimes, that's led to seniors just being left on the streets."

After a raft of cases of senior citizens being left to fend for themselves in the streets, India's government passed the Senior Citizens Act in 2007. The law makes it a crime for citizens here to neglect their aging parents; those convicted of breaking the law face up to three years in prison and a $120 fine.

But the law's effectiveness is questionable. 

Not all states have implemented the act; newspapers reported that in Chennai, the capital city of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, police last year plucked 773 homeless seniors off the streets.

One aid agency recently asked the government to direct schools to devote 30 minutes a day to "moral education," a brief period during the school day when students discuss respect for the elderly. 

"There's no doubt we have dwindling values," Sharma said. "We're not desperate yet but we're hoping that we can avoid that by having people raised better. Having it discussed in class is one way to do that."

On a floor above Sikand's room at the Har-mit old-age home, lives former jeweller Vir Sen, also 90, who believes he was sent to the home because he is a burden to his family. His son, he says, "doesn't want me back." 

Sen said his son paid the $12,200 fee to move him into Har-mit and also covers the $320-a-month cost. "This is how we treat the old here now," he said, clucking his tongue.

Downstairs, Sikand waits for lunch. "Life can be good here or it can be horrible," she says. "But with our families either in America or somewhere else not wanting us, where else can we go?" 

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