INDIA: Protecting the Elderly in a Fast Changing Society

MUMBAI (Mid-Day Coulmns), October 7, 2005: India has close to 80 million senior citizens. That number is larger than the entire population of UK. It is estimated that the number of older persons will grow to 137 million by 2021 in our country. These changes are due in part to the rising life expectations and in part to the changing demographic patterns. While, on the one hand we have an inordinately young population, the proportion of people below the age of 25 is variously estimated to be 50 to 60 percent, on the other we shall soon have a large elderly population. In order to ensure that the two take care of each other the Government is introducing a new legislation. It plans to enact the Older Persons (Maintenance, Care and Protection) Bill, 2005 to provide need-based maintenance, ensure minimum level of financial security and provide for the adequate old-age pension of elderly people in the country. But the proposed law has excluded from its ambit minority communities such as Christians and Muslims saying that they have their own personal laws to take care of the elderly. I don’t understand what personal laws have to do with a welfare measure meted out by the State.If the issue is merely about transference of property and parents’ right to take back property they have given to their children then the personal laws might have been called into question because property relations between families are still determined by personal laws for each community. Let us remember though that these personal laws, in each case, are really laws formed in collaboration with the English colonial rulers and that is why the Muslim Personal Law was, for a long time, referred to as Anglo-Mohammedan Law. However, the Older Person’s Maintenance Bill is supposed to look after the holistic welfare of senior citizens in the society. The rights of elderly parents, or persons, to be protected from abuse, to be looked after, to be given shelter and food are basic human rights and are not peculiar to any single community. Thankfully, certain values in our society are universal and they include providing respect and dignity to the elderly. And the fact is that even the Hindu community has its own laws that protect and take care of the rights of the elderly persons. Section 20 (3) of the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 makes it obligatory for a person to maintain his or her aged or infirm parent or a daughter who is unmarried and is unable to maintain himself or herself out of his or her own earnings or other property. Under the Islamic Law too, it is incumbent upon a man to provide maintenance for his father, mother and grandfather and grandmother if they happen to be in circumstances necessitating it. So why have the new bill in the first place if Personal laws can take care of their rights? I find the omission of Muslims and Christians from the bill to be highly curious and even odder is the explanation that is provided for that omission. The State already differentiates between Hindus and other citizens, and by extension discriminates against the rest, in respect to laws for cow slaughter, for instance. Since the state protects Hindu sentiments about cow slaughter, Muslims, Sikhs and Catholics can legitimately demand a ban on alcohol, smoking and abortion since their respective religions forbid it. Even more grievous is the case of the Dalits’ right to reservation regardless of community. We do know that caste is a pervasive factor in all our communities, Hindus, Muslims and Christians included yet when Hindu-Dalit converts to any religion other than Hinduism, he loses his right to reservations for Scheduled Classes. As Mukul Kesavan says in his little book Secularist Common Sense, “Scheduled caste reservations could be constructed by a Muslim polemicist as a gigantic inducement held out by the state to keep Dalits Hindu (because Dalits who convert to Islam or Christianity are ineligible for reservations).” Overall, the aim of the Bill is noble: to ensure that in a fast changing society and amid rising incidence of elderly persons, children take care of their parents. But is legislation the best step forward? So many of our other welfare laws, related to dowry, untouchability and crimes against women, have not made the smallest dent to the practices in society so will another law make any difference? And is this the best legislation the government could come up with? By Mahmood Farooqui