DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Improved Life Expectancy Means More Years of Misery for Old Women

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 2 2000 (IPS) - Munna Devi fractured her hand last winter. All that the 75-year-old woman did was tug her heavy blanket closer and the bone-destroying osteoporsis disease, she suffers from, took care of the rest.

“I lay unattended for two days before my daughter happened to come by and I could get some relief,” says Devi, who was widowed 15 years ago. “Even death is slow in coming to my deliverance,” she laments, tears in her eyes.

Her case is not unique, with more and more elderly people in India leading lonely lives, uncared for by families and authorities.

Women bear the brunt of ageing in India, says Indira Jai Prakash, who heads the psychiatry division of the Bangalore University in southern India.

Jai Prakash, who has carried out studies on older women and widows, says that while more women are surviving into old age, the main effect of such extension of life is an “extended period of widowhood for women.”

An increase in life expectancy in no way improves the quality of life for the average Indian woman as she grows older. In fact, she becomes prone to a variety of disorders like osteoporosis. These ailments are usually linked to poor childhood nutrition, common in the poor nations, say medical experts.

According to Jai Prakash, the improved life expectancy for women is leading to a “feminisation of ageing”.

“An unwanted girl child grows up to be an anaemic adolescent, is married during puberty, bears the burden of pregnancies and childcare, grows into an unhealthy adult woman and finally into a disabled older women,” she says.

The situation of elderly rural women is even more desperate, she says. An old woman who has spent her entire life in an Indian village, would have been denied proper nutrition, experienced unsatisfactory reproductive care, dangerous working conditions and physical violence.

Part of the problem of older women is the result of what Prakash calls a “selective blindness to the plight of widows.” In spite of the knowledge that widows form a particularly disadvantaged social group, there are few attempts to help them.

Widows rarely get special attention in development programmes or in public debates on social policy. Even women’s movements are mostly preoccupied with the problem of younger women, says Jai Prakash.

Older women are neglected by society because they are considered as non-productive, but the fact is that many women continue to play important roles in the family even when they are too old to work, says Arun Bali who teaches at the prestigious Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.

“Care-giving is a life-long activity for females, the strain of which only increases with the passing years. But what is too often ignored is that they themselves may be ageing and prone to ill-health and other problems associated with the ageing process,” says Bali.

According to Kalyan Bagchi, President of the Society for Gerontological Research, the government has been callous in neglecting the country’s ageing population.

It was only last year, after more than half a century, that the Indian government announced a ‘National Policy on Older Persons’, acknowledging that they have a “legitimate place in society (and the right to) live the last phase of their lives with purpose, dignity and peace.”

The policy paper estimates that improved life expectancy in the country, will add 25 million people above the age of 60 years, to the population. It is estimated that by the year 2013, there will be 100 million Indians who are over 60 years of age.

Government officials and politicians are fond of repeating that life expectancy has steadily improved in India, from 42 years in the 1950s to 58 years in the 1990s. At the age of 60, women have a higher life expectancy than men in India.

But the reality, says Bagchi, is that in the distant villages of India, there are numerous instances where elderly parents have to live in cattle sheds, because the family’s one room mud-house is occupied by their children and grandchildren.

“One can imagine the dietary and health support that is available to an old couple living in a cattle shed,” he says.

In recent years, the government has announced a series of measures for the old, including concessional train and air travel for senior citizens.

“But these measures do not benefit the vast elderly population, who cannot afford travel by any means, and certainly do not take the special problems of older women and widows into consideration,” says Bali.