What are the Private and Public network and support systems operative in Indian society for the aged? Suggest measures to curb down the challenges before care givers of the aged. (2025, 20 Marks)
Support for India’s aged flows through two circuits: a public circuit of law, pension and programme, and a private circuit of kin, community, charity and market. India’s elderly rose from about 104 million in 2011 towards a projected 230 million (15%) by 2036, a scale neither circuit was designed for. Mapping both, and then the care-givers who absorb the shortfall, is the task.
The two networks compared
| Function | Public network | Private network |
|---|---|---|
| Income | IGNOAPS under the National Social Assistance Programme (central share ₹200 a month for 60–79, ₹500 for 80+), Atal Pension Yojana (2015), state top-ups | Sons’ remittances, rent and land, savings; about 78% of the elderly have no pension |
| Health | National Programme for Health Care of the Elderly (2010–11), 18 regional geriatric centres, National Centres for Ageing at Delhi (2023) and Chennai (2024), Ayushman Vay Vandana Card (2024) for all aged 70+ | Out-of-pocket payment, private hospitals (only 31% are insured), hired attendants |
| Legal protection | Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 — tribunals, and a property transfer voidable if the transferee neglects the parent; Elder Line 14567 (2021) | Kin mediation, caste and lineage elders |
| Shelter and care | Integrated Programme for Senior Citizens under the Atal Vayo Abhyuday Yojana; state homes | Charitable old-age homes, pay-and-stay senior living (about 20,000 units), religious trusts, NGOs |
| Participation | Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana (2017) assistive devices, SAGE and SACRED portals | Senior citizens’ associations, temple and mosque charity, neighbourhood reciprocity |
The map reveals an asymmetry. The public circuit is fragmented, means-tested and thin — only 29% of elders reported accessing any social security scheme in a 2024 HelpAge India survey of 5,169 elders. The private circuit is dense but eroding: youth out-migration (about 402 million internal migrants, EAC-PM, 2024) leaves ageing parents behind, producing the ruralisation of old age, while nuclearisation removes the household’s default carer.
Who the care-givers are, and what they carry
- 82% of India’s elders live with family, so care is overwhelmingly domestic and female — daughters-in-law, daughters, and increasingly the ageing spouse, the old caring for the older.
- The Time Use Survey 2024 shows women spending 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work against 88 for men, and 137 minutes on caregiving against 75, with 41% of women participating against 21.4% of men.
- The HelpAge survey of 1,333 care-givers found 68% giving daily support of roughly 20 hours a week, with 32% reporting financial strain and 29% physical strain.
- Sociologically this is caregiver burden — objective (time, money, forgone employment) and subjective (guilt, resentment, isolation). Where burden meets no support, it converts into neglect, which LASI (2017–18) records as the commonest form of elder mistreatment (47.5%).
Measures to relieve the care-giver
- Statutory home-based and respite care as an entitlement under a long-term care framework, so families can hand over without abandoning.
- Training, certification and registration of care workers, and expansion of geriatric medical seats (only about 31 MD seats existed in 2024–25) plus a geriatric paramedic cadre.
- A care-giver allowance and enhanced tax relief for expenditure on dependent parents, recognising care as work.
- Eldercare leave and flexible hours in labour codes, parallel to maternity provision, and day-care centres and dementia support groups at ward and panchayat level.
- Convert Elder Line 14567 from a grievance line into a case-management service, and raise the old-age pension to a meaningful universal floor so income is not itself a care-giver’s burden.
Conclusion
T. H. Marshall’s Citizenship and Social Class (1950) placed welfare in old age among social rights, not charity. India’s present design privatises the cost of ageing onto the household and, within it, onto women. Supporting the care-giver is therefore not a supplement to elder policy but its cheapest and most effective instrument.