The plight of the old, euphemestically called “senior citizens” in our jargon-filled world, is something that we do not speak much about. Alone, abandoned and abused, they suffer the absence of their children and the apathy of a society that views them as a burden, silently.
Sometimes, they are even forced stage a play on the streets to raise our consciousness, as these did to mark World Elder Abuse Prevention Day at Lalbagh in Bangalore on Tuesday.
Photograph: Karnataka Photo News
Also read: Have you—yes, you—called your parents today?
Tags: Churumuri, K. Javeed Nayeem, Karnataka Photo News, KPN, Lalbagh, Photography, Sans Serif
15 June 2010 at 9:26 pm
Last time I checked people of India were so full of respect for elders and caring for parents (ofcourse all because of 5k+ year old rich culture). It’s only decadent west, especially US of A where such awareness needs to be spread.
15 June 2010 at 10:31 pm
Care for the old comes from an overall social security system. Just expecting children to take care of their parents when they grow old wont do with the pressures of modern (especially urban) life.
This is just one more area which shows why we are still a third world nation.
16 June 2010 at 8:53 am
I disagree with Anonymous Guy, it is the responsibility of the kids to take of their parents… what ever may be the circumstances atleast they can give them moral support in their evening years…. govt shld promote pension schemes and make it mandatory for every body so that the elders are socially secured…
16 June 2010 at 10:31 am
Well said Abhi. I know scores of new generation couples who dump their little brats on helpless old parents and swish off to work or even partying and holidaying.
16 June 2010 at 2:47 pm
good one churmuri….most meaningful and relevant to our times. Let’s all do our best to keep them happy…
16 June 2010 at 11:14 pm
Simple, it’s not about new or old generation. It’s just our effed up view of life.
Work like a dog, kill others, save money. Be obsessive about kids (only mine, ofcourse). Spend a 30 lacs on daughter marriage. Another 60 lacs on that apartment next to slum. And then wonder why I have not enough after 60.
17 June 2010 at 2:00 am
With all due respects to the achievements and accommodates of the NRIs, they are among the Indians who neglect the parents the most. Many of them are faced with a choice between “good life” their host countries offer vs parents, except for a minority of them, they prefer “good life” and a “great future” for kids over their aging parents. I recently visited an old age home, 79% of the people there were parents of NRIs! Having said that, there are also resident Indians who neglect their parents but the numbers are much lower. Most of the resident Indian neglect is due to poverty in contrast to “good life” criterion of NRIs.
17 June 2010 at 5:38 pm
So true, reminds me of the Rajesh Khanna starrer, Avtaar. It is a pity that the parents who sacrificed a lot to ensure that we never face any scarcity in our lives are being left alone and deprived. Wonder what their heart is really made of. I am sure that there will be a day when their kids will also leave them in the same old age home where they had left their parents. As you sow, so shall you reap.
17 June 2010 at 7:45 pm
For all those who talk about being with one’s parents, let me tell you one thing: sometimes it is not just possible to be with them or take them where you are. There are many reasons for that and one can only feels helpless.
Here is a real-life story: My friend’s dad, in Mysore, worked hard all through his productive life. Most of his savings went towards their decent house, children’s education and daughter’s simple marriage. His savings and meagre pension manages to cover their monthly expenses. His wife remained a homemaker and brought up the children with great values.
Daughter left to Bangalore after marriage (They wanted to give their daughter to someone who was financially sound and had a promising career and couldn’t find a groom in Mysore). Son was forced to leave to Bangalore for a decent job and pay, and eventually marries and gets settled there. The parents do not want to go and stay with their children as they find it comfortable in Mysore.
Parents initially visited their children and grand children as often as they could but later had to reduce their travelling due to health reasons. Children initially visited every weekend, then a few times a month and then gradually reduced their visits due to work pressure and lack of personal time.
Parents are financially independent but emotionally dependent. Fast paced city and new lifestyle makes it difficult for them to go and stay with their children although children and their spouses try to accomodate them with love. Back at home loneliness and age-realated diseases are slowly killing them.
One fine day father passes away and the children are worried about their mother. They don’t want her to stay alone given the rising crimes involving senior citizens these days and somehow convince her to stay with them. Mother finds it incredibly boring as everybody leaves house at the crack of dawn and return back so late that they are too tired to even talk for a couple of minutes. The big city is scarier for her to venture out on her own and now she has become completely dependent on her children and their spouses for everything. Mother is frustrated at life. Mother’s illnesses make it difficult for children to take care of her. They decide to put her to an old age home where she can get good company as well as constant care.
The root cause of problem in my opinion is that the lack of uniform development in the country has resulted in families moving farther apart. You need a good amount of money these days especially given the never ending inflation.
PS: For all those smart-a** who said why couldn’t the children stay back in Mysore and start something of their own, that way they could be with their parents as well as do well for themselves: Starting something of ones own and ensuring it works is not everybody’s cup of tea even if investment is not a problem.
18 June 2010 at 1:36 am
AG:
>This is just one more area which shows why we are still a third world nation.
Churumuri was asking if you called your parents today. Not if you are taking care of the parents.
Most old folks, need emotional support more than financial/physical. Typically empty nesters can look forward to live for about 20-30years, after children leave home. Out of that period, they’d physically/financially may come to depend on their children for about 5-10 years, but for the rest of the time it is just the feeling of being uncared by the very children who they sacrificed everything for that saddens them.
I am sure, I’ll miss my daughters terribly when they go their independent way.. I am also sure being caught up in their lives, I may get to speak to them only once a week, and will feel that to be totally inadequate. :-(
Its not about third world country – it is human nature.
18 June 2010 at 1:46 am
Div:
>they prefer “good life” and a “great future” for kids over their aging parents.
Law of nature is to nurture the future generation.
Having said that, I agree NRI’s are unfortunate to be away from their parents, and most can’t even get their parents to visit them (leave alone getting them to live with them). They fall in to a trap of weekly calls, a visit once in two years etc. In effect, parents will see their children/grandchildren some 5-6 times before they die.
One of the reasons why I always worked in Bangalore, resisting better opportunities abroad – I get to visit my parents in Mangalore 6 times in a year, and they visit us 3 times a year, we communicate every alternative day, so we never feel we were apart for long. Ideally this is how all families should be if they can’t be together.
But then, that’s nature of life. It takes you to places, it parts you from your loved ones. Atleast most NRIs try to financially take care of their parents (may be out of guilty conscience), most Indian kids can’t even afford to do that.
19 June 2010 at 12:34 am
harkol,
> Churumuri was asking if you called your parents today. Not if you are taking care of the parents.
The article actually says:
“Alone, abandoned and abused, they suffer the absence of their children and the apathy of a society that views them as a burden, silently.”
A token phone call/short visit will not solve the problem these old people were trying to demonstrate in the street play.
Good to hear that you chose to stay in Bangalore. Curious – why did you have to leave Mangalore?
19 June 2010 at 9:36 pm
hmmm… Talking about taking parents being neglected in today’s world, how about parents that are being taken care of by family members? I talk of the medical requirements of the elderly which is quite extensive and is prohibitively expensive in good hospitals!
As an example, my grandparents live with my uncle who lives one street parallel to mine, my parents and my uncle’s family pay for my granny’s hospital bills which are quite frequent considering she needs dialysis 3 times a week as both her kidneys have failed. Each time there is a complication she needs to be hospitalised which requires a downpayment of around 40K rupees to get her admitted into a ward. Apart from the doctor’s regular fees, there are consultation charges to be paid bcos the doctor does not have the time to do the consultation when visiting the patient in the ward (if it ever happens all that is… half the time, the doctor just sees the report n prescribes medication or a never ending sequence of more expensive tests n procedures). In any case, every two months or three months presents a complication which in turn presents a bill in excess of 1.5 lakhs per hospitalisation of 1 grandparent of mine. This is a good hospital which is equipped to handle such a case (certain cases cannot be handled in all hospitals due to lack of infrastructure, lack of staff, lack of specialists or lack of money!).
In our case, we are lucky to be able to afford the bills, but the question is for how long?? The bigger questions are:
1. How to pay for the bils if the other grandparent also need hospitalisation and…
2. We can afford it but what about those who cannot? There are instances of patients coming from as far as 15kms off just for a dialysis. There are instances when people sell thier land, their house, everything to get their parents treated. There are people who cannot stay to look after the elderly bcos they need to work day and night to earn the money to pay the bills. There are people who end up asking the doctors to reduce the amount of medication and procedures to amounts lesser than what is needed…for example, dialysis twice a week instead of the required 3-4 times a week. There are people who just get the elders discharged as they cannot afford the bills.
Looking at these instances, taking care of elders is easier said than done! The costs of caring for families in the capitalist ever-increasingly-americanised work culture and social culture of modern urban india is simply prohibitive! Add to this the high costs of schooling, high costs of living(food, electricity, daily transportation etc.., communication expenses(mobiles, phones, posts,couriers etc…))…
HOW CAN A MAN NOT EARNING LAKHS AND LAKHS OF RUPEES A YEAR AFFORD TO LIVE IN TODAY’S INDIA…. LET ALONE CARE FOR THE ELDERS???
As i put it earlier… caring for family as in our traditional system is easier said than done. And IMHO… the whole social security deal of paying compulsory health insurance and social tax like in europe is not the way out. The way out has to be to make things less expensive, but unfortunately in our greedy world, everyone wants more and more and more. Caring for elders indeed! Caring cannot come about without a change in our attitude, one cannot care for something/someone unless one is willing to give selflessly/compassionately!
20 June 2010 at 12:27 pm
AG:
> Good to hear that you chose to stay in Bangalore. Curious – why did you have to leave Mangalore?
That’s the hard part. I was interested in electronics/Computers from my High school days. There were only two good shops in Mangalore for a Hobbyist those days (Electrovoice and Manohar Radio House), and they won’t stock everything one needs. I think even today it isn’t much better, but it is possible for one to find the stuff on Internet and order online.
And when I chose to pursue this as a career, I knew Mangalore won’t cut it. So, i chose a place closest to Mangalore.
IAC, I kept traveling to Mangalore, for I love the place and My parents and siblings are all there. Larger family is there. I never miss a wedding or functions in the family. I used to travel every 2 weeks initially, became once a month, now with all work pressure it is once in two months. And ofcourse for any family functions etc.
It was the best compromise I could’ve made. I have stayed for short stays in Mumbai, Hyderabad and couple of US cities. But, never more than couple of months at once. And Longest I have stayed away from Mangalore is 6 months (during the chikungunya pandemic, when I was forbidden by my parents from coming to mangalore). But, after 27 years in Bangalore, I am still a Mangalorean at heart.
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Prajwal:
>We can afford it but what about those who cannot?
Healthcare in old age is one of the biggest expenses one will need to plan for. :-(
Indian healthcare is slowly reaching the world standards, especially in big cities, but the sad part is – So are the costs! It is cruel not to be able to afford a particular medicine/procedure, when it is available. In Olden days, where choice was limited, there was little dilemma.
For example – Today a particular cancer patient may have to go through expensive chemotherapy costing between 6-10lakhs, with only 50% chance of survival for 5 years.
If a person is already 60-70 years old and if this expense can ruin a family financially, it is more than overwhelming for the families for sure.
precisely why we need to have universal old-age social security and healthcare. Its expensive, and govt. currently has no way to pay for it. :-(
***
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Prajwal:
>The way out has to be to make things less expensive,
Things are complicated. I know healthcare industry well. Most procedures that are lifesaving, also happen to be terribly expensive. As someone had joked “Modern medicine isn’t about extending life, it is about prolonging death.”
For example – Cancer medicine. In olden days, a person with cancer would die (about 15% of all people died of cancer). Today they still die of cancer, but their death is extended by upto couple of decades with various expensive treatments.
What makes them so expensive is that, for arriving at one successful method/drug that sort of works – they’d have invested on research on hundreds of different methods/drugs that didn’t work. The approved drug itself normally isn’t very expensive to produce, but to get to that stage is so super expensive in reasearch. And the profit made from such drugs is what funds future research.
One way out is for charity funded research (Precisely what Bill Gates is attempting) so that the drugs themselves are available as Generics – Cheap, highly affordable.
But, that model hasn’t caught on yet. I feel govts. around the world should encourage and bring in mechanisms to make such models more successful for medicines to be cheaper.
Another reason for healthcare expense is cost of doctor’s fee and hospitalization expenses. An hospital is more expensive to run (per sq.ft) than a hotel, yet, people need the hospitals to be much cheaper than a hotel, since it isn’t discretionary expense. One way to reduce the hospitalization cost is to have hospitals away from expensive real-estate.
Doctor’s fee is more problematic. Specialist doctors are educated/trained for much longer than any other professionals. Typical specialist starts earning only after he is 28 or 30 years old (some 7-8 years after his engineering counter part). Their initial incomes are no where comparable to that of Engineers, so they try and make up for it in their later career (when they’ll be in much demand). So, it isn’t unusual for a experienced orthopedic to charge 15-20K for a routine operation, but an upstart orthopedic across the street won’t even have sufficient patients!
All these are difficult problems for govt. to address.
One choice is for a person to reject medicine/treatment and chose to die like hundreds of our ancestors did. But, how many are willing to die a natural, unaided death, before reaching a very ripe old age (and even at that time)?
23 June 2010 at 11:17 pm
harkol:
I appreciate the justification from the doctor’s viewpoint. Considering i work in research, i also know the amount of money that goes into developing something new. but the point to be made is that ppl cannot afford. Who would pay a doctor if he/she charges an outrageous amount? Considering the doctor has to earn his invested money and his profits from patients, is there no limit or no meaning to the profit margin set here. Assuming a doc charges 50 rs per visit on an average in a small clinic where he sees between 50-100 ppl a day, that is still between 2500-10000 rupees a day. A lot more than many of us earn. In speciality hospitals the consultation fees are at least 300-500 rs or more. Operaton fees etc are different. and in big hospitals, doctors also get a cut from the hospital , it is not like they take only what the patients pay them!
All forgiven, considering the amounts they charge for the procedures and for hospitalisation, is it too much to expect that the doctor in charge of a patient visits the patient when he/she is supposed to takes the time out to explain things to the family members properly instead of keeping them ignorant and afraid all the time? Or is it too much to expect an explanation in or near the ward of the patient rather than having to pay again to see the regular responsible doctor in his/her “office” in a different wing in the hospital? Or is it too much to expect that the doctor actually comes to look at the patients who are hospitalised more frequently rather than just accepting the doctor’s analysis of the reports submitted to them?I am not making these up. These are actual practices in hospitals today!
27 June 2010 at 3:12 pm
Prajwal:
>50 rs per visit on an average in a small clinic where he sees between 50-100 ppl a day
Wrong statistics. I know these figures because of my extended family has many practicing docs.
Usually a good doctor can only see about 6-8 patients in an hour. In fact, in some disciplines it is even lesser, considering the time that needs to be spent. Assuming he has people waiting continously, and can turnover patients in about 5 minutes, and he works flat out 8hrs of consulting – your figures may be right. But, it never works that way.
Typical doctor sees no more than 25-30 patients a day. Most small town doctors earn between 500-1000bucks a day. Specialists earn between 3-5K a day, depending on cities. Some high demand folks (like heart, ortho etc) can earn upto 8-10lakhs a month due to operations etc.
But, India happens to be one of the cheapest countries in non-hospitalized medicare. The problem is more to do with the inadequacy of in-patient care. Govt. needs to subsidize heavily the healthcare sector as it can’t provide the health care directly.