Unprecedented demographic changes are transforming our world. By 2050, 1 of every 5 persons will be aged 60+ as compared to the current 1 of every 10 persons. In India the population of senior citizens is 100 million – which is greater than the population of UK. These mind boggling figures will have extensive repercussions on all of our lives and not just the policy makers and academia.

Situation Analysis:

• Increasing life expectancy, lower mortality and an overall enhancement of the standard of living has contributed to people living longer.
• About 65% of the aged have to depend on others for their day-to-day maintenance.
• Less than 20% of elderly women but majority of elderly men are economically independent.
• About 55 per thousand elderly persons in urban areas suffer from one or more disabilities.
• By 2050, India will be home to one out of every six of the world’s older persons, and only China will have a larger number of elderly people, according to estimates released by the United Nations Population Fund.

Qualitative Analysis:

• Increase in lifespan results in chronic functional disabilities leading to a need for assistance by elders in simple activities of daily living whereas smaller families means fewer care givers emergence of nuclear families has exposed elders to emotional, physical and financial insecurity.

Stake Holder Analysis:

• Family has traditionally been the primary source of support for the elderly in India.
• The elderly depend primarily on their families for economic and material support.
• The occupational structure of currently working elderly shows significant numbers are employed in unskilled and low paid jobs.
• Pension or retirement benefits are not available to the majority (90%) of the elderly.
• Women living alone have higher incidence of work participation compared to those living with spouse or others. In addition, a negligible number of women receive retirement benefits (3 per cent) as compared to 15 per cent among men. This is despite the fact that a large majority of the elderly women are widows.

Quality of Life Index for the Elderly

• The Four Pillars of this index are: Physical, Intellectual, Social connectedness and Spiritual.
• Ease of living will be proportional to avenues available for the development of the four domains of life after 60.
• The indicators could be collected in Municipal ward-wise manner, based on factors that are extremely relevant to senior citizens and their lives such as crime rates, availability of side-walks for walking, availability of medical facilities, bus stops having benches to sit while waiting, ramps in railway stations, bus stations airports, old age homes of reasonable standards for the various socio-economic categories, easy access to public transportation, humanly relating banking systems in the place of automated FAQs in banking vehicular comfort for walking long distances in airport terminals, wheel chair assistance in airports ad aircrafts.
• These indicators can be aggregated and analyzed, and the municipal wards of cities can be ranked from best to worst. This index will form our Quality of Life for Senior Citizens.

The short terms objective of having such an index is:

1. To publish a white paper documenting areas where it is more conducive for the elderly to reside in and enjoy a decent quality of life. This white paper will contain information about the odds stacked against senior citizens as they go about their day to day lives
2. Such information can be used to kick-start a discussion about the lives of senior citizens.
3. To obtain a better insight into the demographics of senior citizens that can be utilized for future projects planned by the Ministries, their departments and other organisations interested in the elderly.

The long term objective of having such as index is:

1. Pioneer an unusual, niche index while such an index already exists it does not exist for the micro level that needs to be focused on, specific to the elderly
2. Perform similar analyses for all the 20 cities and come out with a comprehensive report about the case of living for the elderly.
3. Much like CRISIL evaluates the credit worthiness of companies, elderly-worthiness of neighborhoods can be evaluated. Then neighborhoods can be rated from “friendly” to “unfriendly”, and possibly turn it into a revenue stream for services that can be delivered.

Conclusion:

An India which is the “most Age-Friendly Country of the World” is a possibility. Kerala has, for example, introduced age friendly villages, followed by NIMHANS in Karnataka. With such leads already working at grassroots level it is possible to bring about ease of living for the elderly in India.