INDIA: Turning Old Into Gold

Editorial PANJIM, Goa (The Navhind Times), June 9, 2008: Senior citizens is a term that still connotes more like a formal honour given to the older section of society by the state, rather than any meaningful role. If we go by that term, society would mean to be composed of junior and senior citizens. While junior citizens have been playing active roles in all walks of life, the senior citizens have been made to wait for their ˜Day of Departure", with some little care given to them here and some little attention paid to them there. The Goa government has opened three day care centers in Salcete, Sattari and Mapusa where the 60-plus people can gather, read newspapers, watch television and have tea, all without paying anything. More day care centres are planned at the panchayat and municipal levels across the state. The state government also has a good scheme called Dayanand Social Security scheme, which grants Rs 1,000 per month to needy senior citizens. Then there are non-government and religious organisations that have silently been doing commendable work in a limited way for the care of the senior citizens. Yet we do need to ask if we have done anything to make the term ˜senior citizens" meaningful. Pictures of frail, handicapped grandmothers and grandfathers being carried over someone's back or in a wheel chair to polling stations are a favourite ˜human interest" catch for news photographers. But these pictures only fit the stereotype we have of ˜older people“ helpless, full of innocence and worthy of compassion. We need to think, however, whether we should not go beyond the sighing of compassionate sighs at the sight of an older person. We need to make them senior citizens in the true sense. Every one of us will remember those elders being taken in a chair or over someone's back or leaning on a shoulder on either side at a polling station. Should we not stop and ask if those elders are elder citizens in the real sense of the term? Do they just cast their vote or are they actively participating in the political process? Does their voice count? We do sermonize each other: Take care of the elderly; but do we care to listen to their voices as citizens? The answer is: we all only mouth the phrase ˜Old is Gold" but in real practice look upon the old as rust. This attitude of ˜Seniors are people who are about to disappear" has to change. The march of medicine and other sciences and other remarkable healthcare advancements made in post-colonial India has increased life expectancy and people are living longer. Alexander and Asoka made those amazing achievements before they were 30 and vanished thereafter. Today, people are not only living longer but also living healthy. Ageing and diseases acquired in earlier stages of life do torment the older people, but despite these odds, a growing number of them are trying to live on their own, committed to ˜die walking"! But the society and the state are not helping them. They are sighing compassionate sighs but not doing anything to involve senior citizens in decision-making at any level - family, culture or politics. An active campaign has to begin to involve them in meetings and discussions held for deciding anything. We are not asking the views of senior citizens to be imposed on junior citizens. But junior citizens cannot go on taking decisions by excluding senior citizens. You may overrule senior citizens' viewpoints by a majority, which is the deciding matrix for democracy, but you cannot ignore them. The government must make a law making it binding upon all committees, whether a society of a residential building or a co-operative or task forces set up by government to have representation of senior citizens. That will increase their life expectancy even further and make them fitter. But more than that, they will die with satisfaction that the knowledge and experience they acquired in their whole lifetime was put to use for the future generations. © Copyright Navhind Papers & Publications Ltd.