Seventy-year-old Somabhai stares out of the window for hours hoping that his son would visit him soon. At this age, Somabhai was found wandering in the streets by the volunteers of Atitna Ashirwad Vrudhashram. It is a crowded shelter for elderly homeless people, at Hirapur Chowkdi, some 20km from Ahmedabad. Another old woman in her late seventies Parvatiben also lives in the same shelter. She was found by volunteers roaming in the streets of Ahmedabad. Sadly, both had been abandoned by their families.
According to a survey, more than 71% of older adults in India are harassed or humiliated by their own family members, relatives, or children. Its startling discovery is that every second elderly person interviewed by the researchers admitted to being abused by their kin.
Kamala, who is 75 years old, recalls the heartbreaking afternoon that transformed her life. “I’d finished my lunch of chappatis and dal and was relaxing in my room in Karol Bagh, central Delhi, when my son Amit stepped in and asked if I wanted to see a family in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, approximately an hour away.”
She was looking forward to taking a vehicle ride with her lone child. She says, “I was looking forward to spending some time with him.” The fragile septuagenarian decided to accompany her son and his family on their travels, unaware that it would be the final time she saw them.
“Although I was trying to make conversation with him on the way, he appeared to be deep in thought and was silent,’’ she remembers.
Once they were on the highway, Amit, who is 50 and a father, pulled over to the side of the road near a wayside fruit stand and invited her to step out to buy some apples.
“I saw my son start the truck as I was choosing the fruit, and before I could shout out to him, he sped away,” Kamala adds, a tear streaming down her deeply wrinkled face.
“I assumed he’d gone to get gas or buy something, so I waited in the scorching sun for many hours, hoping he’d return. But then the truth hit me late at night: I’d been abandoned by my own son, my only son and child.”
A few local locals took pity on the elderly woman crying by the side of the road and assisted her to an old-age home maintained by a charity in Ghaziabad. She was originally hesitant to share details about her kid to the volunteers because she was emotionally distraught, but after much pressing, she ultimately revealed his address.
Representatives from the organisation found down Amit a month later to encourage him to return home with his mother, but he refused, claiming he was disowning her since she was a burden to care for.
“A few months before getting rid of his mother, Amit reportedly forced her transfer the ownership of her house to him,” a volunteer at the home that took Kamala in said.
‘They took all I had and dumped me’
In Kamala’s case, she was not physically abused. But there are many elderly who are even physically tortured. It holds true in the case of Uma, an 80-year-old woman whose hands and legs bear marks of bruises and cuts, a result of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her relatives. They tortured her, forcing her to give them all her gold jewellery before they dumped her in front of the old-age home one evening in May last year. “They didn’t want me so they took all that I had and dumped me here,’’ she say with her eyes filled with tears.
Kamala and Uma are just two of the millions of elderly people with uncaring family members who take their limited riches before throwing them out of their homes. A report by HelpAge India, a voluntary organisation working for abandoned and needy elderly people, reveals some shocking statistics. According to the report, one in three senior citizens is a victim of abuse in India.
“Some of the abuses we found are as brutal as the severe beating of elderly people by their own sons, daughters and daughters-in-law,” states the 2012 report. It also says that in more than 50 per cent of abuse cases, the perpetrators are family members, with the son being the primary abuser. And the most common cause for the abuse is property.
“Society is no longer parent-oriented and helpless elderly are moving out of their homes to places that cater to their needs. Sadly, in India we don’t have enough old-age homes to house all the abandoned elderly people” says Mathew Cherian, chief executive of HelpAge India.
According to an activist and charity worker, “All senior citizens we spoke to in Delhi said they had been verbally abused, while 33 per cent confided they had been physically abused, often beaten and tied to chairs.”
The most sensational case which shook the nation was of a 75-year-old cancer patient whose well-off relatives took her to a crematorium to burn her alive as they did not want to pay for her treatment. The crematorium staff noticed her move during the ritual that they called the police and she was saved in time.
Elderly parents being abused and abandoned is not just an urban phenomenon. In rural India, the family system is eroding, with the younger generation increasingly heading off to cities with their spouses and their children to start a new life – without their parents or grandparents.
According to a 2012 survey by HelpAge India, less than 40 per cent of Indians now live with extended family. While Delhi has the highest number of senior citizens who own property, over the years they become meek and dependent on their children. And that is generally when problems arise.
Those who have worked in government service or for a reputed private company receive pensions, but a large majority of India’s population still work as farmers or day labourers. Once they are too old to work, they are forced to rely on their children or extended family for support.
There is a government-backed pension programme for the poor called the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, which provides Rs200 a month to people over 60 who live below the poverty line, meaning they earn less than $1.25 (Dh4.59) per day. But the amount they receive is barely enough to get them food for a week. The government also approved a bill to increase the pension to Rs500 a month for those over the age of 80.
“In 2007, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, which protects the rights of senior citizens, was passed in parliament. It provides an inexpensive and efficient system where the elderly could petition the administration to seek maintenance from their family.
When the bill was passed, the government discussed plans to build at least one old-age home in all 629 districts in the country. The government said it would take care of elderly people if their family members were unable to look after them.
(The writer is the founder of Powerful Teachers, an organisation that works the elderly)
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