Caring for the Aged

By : The Independent Bangladesh
April 9, 2002

The Second World Assembly on Ageing is being convened in Madrid by the United Nations General Assembly. The Madrid Assembly, according to reports, will focus on measures to be adopted by in response to the challenges of the ageing process, relating ageing to the development agenda and public and private partnerships to strengthen solidarity between the generations.

We would not like to call ageing a problem; rather it should be seen as a phenomenon that needs particular kind of attention and some re-ordering of the developmental priority. In fact shorter life expectancy had been a problem and as we continue to address that we shall have to accept in good grace the larger proportion of the senior population. The growing proportion of the 65 plus population is a global issue and with further growth in all the economies of the world and progress in healthcare and medicine, it will snowball. The UN thinks the trend is irreversible. We can exult in this higher rate of survival but then, in strictly economic terms, the higher ‘dependency ratio’ would go to cause severer drain on the economy unless the necessary adaptation has been made in the development programme. In Bangladesh, it must be admitted, the issue of ageing has not received much attention from the point of view of economic development. It is assumed that eastern cultures have some built-in features that can greatly cushion the pains and agonies of the aged. In the West institutional arrangements for the care of the aged are adequate but their psychological problems like sense of isolation continue to dog them in their twilight years.

In our country because of more composite family ties, the old women and men may feel less lonely but welfare schemes are almost non-existent except for those who retire from public services. And our country is also passing through the same process of industrialisation and urbanisation which induces in those who are on the sideline of the productive process the same sense of estrangement. In other words, in our case too the issue will assume more serious form.