| The Indian landscape these days appears awash in turmoil. On
the political front, chaos reigns. The business arena too is gripped by a crisis of
confidence. Less obvious is the discord that has insidiously crept into the Indian family
system. India Today has recorded the impact of demographic shifts in various cover stories
through the years. But as India ages, problems persist. In 1961, the population of 60-plus
people was 2.5 crore; by 2001 it will be seven crore. In traditional times, getting old
was no cause for worry, as the joint family provided the perfect cushion. Times have changed. Ironically the very families which began the shift
towards nuclear units in the '60s are now ageing and realising their offspring have little
patience for them. As our story this week investigates, parents across India are being
shunted into old age homes and then left forgotten. Moreover, parents still residing in
their own homes are increasingly maltreated and abused by their children, on occasion even
forced to commit suicide. Money, as usual, is the primary root of this evil. Once
generations waited to inherit property; now a more impatient generation is demanding its
inheritance immediately.
The story began a few weeks ago when Senior Editor Sumit
Mitra casually looked at a survey on old people done by the acclaimed demographer Ashish
Bose. Astonished by the grisly stories that Bose recounted, Mitra dug deeper. He spoke to
psychologists, visited old-age institutions and met elderly people at their homes. Mitra
was horrified. "I found many old people suffering in silence, caught in a difficult
situation. It was awkward for many of them to speak out since this was a problem directly
caused by their offspring." The fact that so many still did is indicative of the
gradual crumbling of one of India's most cherished social institutions.
(Aroon Purie) |
