INDIA: Millions Search A Dignified Old-Age Life

NEW DELHI (The Economic Times), November 28, 2007: “Can you imagine us years from today sharing a parkbench quietly? how terribly strange to be 70! Oldfriends......” (Simon and Garfunkel) In a society increasingly obsessed with popular messages that make superlative virtues out of power-spending youth and in-your-face materialism, social security for the aged - as also their health, nutritional safety, property rights and general welfare and dignity - is often a discourse relegated to dismissive squiggles. In India, life expectancy now stands at 68 years compared to just 20 years in 1911-12, and about 32 at the time of Independence. The WHO says the number of aged will grow to 1.2 billion by 2025, almost the same as the population of India. By then, three of every four persons will be in developing countries. As of 2001, India accounted for 77 million elderly above the age of 60, a figure second only to that of China. About 29 million of India’s elderly are above 70 years, 8 million above 80. The size of India’s elderly population aged 60 and above is expected to increase to 179 million in 2031 from 77 million now, and further to 301 million in 2051. The proportion is projected to reach 12% in 2031and 17% in 2051. According to Centre for Development Studies’ SI Rajan life expectancy is, however, longer for females, with the 2001 census showing up a sex ratio of 1,028 females for every 1,000 males. Outlining the demographics of ageing in India, Pravin Visaria of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi has endorsed the reading that over time, urban India has homed fewer aged people than rural India despite a far lower fertility rate. Loneliness is another predominant demographic factor. One 1993-94 study points out that about 70% of the aged males reported work but only 24 and 11% of aged females in urban and rural areas did so, respectively. But while 30% of the aged reported that they were dependent on others, 71 and 76% in rural and urban areas, respectively among the females reported dependency. All of them, also reported a plethora of ailments, chronic illnesses and disabilities, necessitating substantial medical expenditure and care. .Despite the growing old-age population, there is little coherent policy planning or long-term perspective to coin social security schemes for the elderly in this country. In the developed world, social security for the elderly has moved centrestage, thanks in no small part to increasing social security outlay demanded of the state. Here, after decades of ignoring this vulnerable section of society that is 60 years plus, it was the largely discredited PV Narasimha Rao regime that, on July 28, 1995, launched the National Social Assistance Programme(NSAP), to be effective from August 15 that year. The NSAP included the National Old Age Pension Scheme(NOAPS) and the National Family Benefit Scheme(NFBS) which made a one-time cash payment of Rs 10,000 in the case of the death of the breadwinner of the family, to be implemented along with the Annapurna scheme that gives 19 kgs of free grain to old people left outside the pension cover. The NOAPS, meant mainly for the destitute under existing schemes, gave a pitiful financial assistance of Rs 75 to beneficiaries each month, expecting the state governments to make matching contributions. Studies of the schemes stress that only some states like Maharashtra, Delhi and Sikkim beefed this up substantially but as many as 18 states and UTs paid Rs 100 or less a month. Most defaulted, relying on highly faulty delivery systems to pay beneficiaries. After a long haul of ten years, it was only in 2006-07 that the UPA regime decided to hike the contribution from Rs 75 per person to Rs 200 ($5 at current exchange rates) per person. That itself came in the thick of a debate worldwide over whether a limited means-tested scheme of social security, or a broadbased one was more suited to developing countries such as India where it has not been possible for the state to extend pension cover to all eligible. Several studies pointed to the latter as preferable. All the more so since well organised social security and pension system here currently exists only for 10% of the workforce. Unorganised sector employees have no formal security and welfare benefits during their working lives or old age. In order to ameliorate this situation, the Centre has at long last come up with the unorganised sector social security fund that workers can join and contribute to, so as to receive health, education, housing, water supply and old age pension. Other social assistance programmes by the Centre and the state governments meant for the aged exist, covering some 20% under some sort of public pension. However, Rajan emphasises, these are irregular and difficult to avail of due to the current policy of means test. He recommends universal pension for the elderly as in Nepal, adding, Kerala Model of social security could be replicated by other states. “Because nutritional vulnerability and the threat of starvation and death are more imminent in old age for the poor, the government must universalise pension benefits,” asserts Vandana Bhatia, a researcher. But the call for a long-term policy perspective has little impact on the ‘made over’ NOAPS announced earlier this month by the Centre. Nor indeed did it come up with an effective suggestion such as linking the scheme to the Consumer Price Index and 6-monthly review. A fortnight ago, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS). The revamped scheme mainly plans to extend the extant faulty scheme with its paltry assistance, to 1.63 crore beneficiaries from the current 87 lakh, thus covering all the old in the Below Poverty Line category in the country. There are, though, no additional benefits at government hospitals, health centres, state transport. Devoid of laws that give the state the power to scrutinise and access the bank accounts of citizens neglecting to beef up the social security paid to elderly single parents, the government has not even suggested fast-track courts to clear an increasing number of legal cases involving property rights and care for the aged. Strong concerns have earlier been voiced in the case of the earlier centrally sponsored NOAPS, including the fact that several states failed to allocate even the mandatory minimum funds to these schemes. Most states took the 06-07 hike in Central payment as an excuse to legitimise their own cutbacks in contribution.’ Meanwhile, the Annapurna scheme was withdrawn in states such as MP and Haryana and the NFBS is, Bhatia observes, in “dire straits.” The actual coverage for NOAPS, too, did not even meet the limited government targets. The SC Commissioners’ report said that against a target of 58.09 lakh beneficiaries for 22 states for which the data was available, the potential coverage based on utilisation figures was only 51.92% in ‘04-05. And even that was the combined coverage under the NOAPS and the state pension schemes. The UPA’s “demand-based” (and therefore without any specific budgetary allocation, as in the case of the NREGP) IGNOAPS, therefore, is merely expanding a faulty scheme full of leaks and loopholes to a larger population of the elderly, without any reference to ensure that the scheme meets the social security needs of the country’s elderly in the fullest sense of the term. A 2005 door-to-door survey of beneficiaries in Delhi revealed that pilferage, unutilised funds and denial of benefits to the eligible elderly was rampant and intrinsic to the scheme. As many as 10,131 dead persons were being paid old age pensions by the Delhi government and about Rs 6 crore of the taxpayers’ money was lying unused in bank accounts and post offices. The Nagaland government, too, faced a similar problem of weeding out dead ‘beneficiaries’ from the scheme. In states such as Bihar, the average 10 km trek to the block pension office each month, sometimes led to death. In several states, bank accounts for all beneficiaries have yet to be opened but the IGNOAPS has set a fresh July 2008 deadline for this, to credit assistance directly into accounts of those eligible. “After more than a decade, the NOAPS is still not fully functional. Effective implementation requires awareness among citizens about their entitlement. The scheme also needs a multi-dimensional overhaul with an enhanced budget, better utilisation, clearer guidelines and implementation and a non-negotiable commitment from the government to provide social assistance to all citizens in the dusk of their lives,” Bhatia emphasises. After all, there can only be one thing worse than dying young: living an old and destitute life devoid of all dignity after a lifetime of productivity, By Prabha Jagannathan, Times News Network Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited.