 "The path to ageing with dignity")
Parsham, 65, works as a labourer in Delhi and lives at Ashray Adhikar, a centre for the homeless. He earns Rs 70-80 a day and on the days he is unwell, eats in a temple or gurdwara.
Ramlali, a widow in her mid-60s has been living with her son in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh since her husband died three years ago. She has constant quarrels with her daughter-in-law over money, but keeps her peace as she has nowhere else to go.
Parsham and Ramlali are merely two amongst India’s burgeoning population of the elderly — close to 10 crore, of which one-sixth live without any family support. The 2014 Helpage India report on the state of the elderly in India enumerates the problems that the seniors who live in poverty face – physical, psychological, social and economic. Given the forecast that between 2006 and 2050, India’s population will grow 40 per cent, while that of its aged (60 and above) will increase by 270 per cent — the problems of the elderly can’t be wished away. The solution lies in providing them adequate social security in the form of pension. The central government’s Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme allots Rs 200 per month to the elderly living below the poverty line, while Delhi government gives Rs 1,000. Is this enough for an old, possibly infirm person in the capital to survive on? Possibly not.
According to Nikhil Dey, convener of NCPRI and co-founder of MKSS, every time they held public audits in Rajasthan, they would “see several old people sitting patiently, waiting to be heard. Often, they’d carry bunches of papers to show how they’d unsuccessfully tried to get government pension.” This eventually prompted them to start Pension Parishad in 2012, for “there was a crying need for a uniform and well-implemented pension policy”. They were joined by Baba Adhav, the visionary activist who’s tirelessly worked to unionise unorganised workers in Maharashtra and institute a contributory pension for them in the state.
Together, they have been campaigning for a universal and non-contributory old age pension not less than 50 per cent of the prescribed minimum wage, or Rs 2,000 per month, whichever is higher. Further, the Parishad wants the monthly pension to be indexed to inflation bi-annually and revised every two to three years in the same manner as is done for salaries and pensions of government servants. They also want the pensionable age to be reduced to 55 for men, 50 for women and 45 for highly vulnerable groups such as transgenders and sex workers.
When the Parishad organised a rally at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to get the attention of the MPs attending the winter 2013 session of Parliament, the response was incredible. “So many old people turned out to demand their rights! The first day, when the lunch we were to serve them was delayed, we realised that they didn’t even have the money to buy a snack for themselves,” recollects Dey. At the meeting, and subsequent ones, the point that Pension Parishad drove home, both to the elderly and to the government, was that pension was anything but dole. It was payback for the decades that they had contributed to the nation’s economy. Pension was, indeed, their right as citizens and voters, and its denial, a blot on civil society.
“At one of these meetings, we asked our elderly participants what they’d do if they began getting the Rs 2,000 pension that we were demanding,” says Dey. “One old man said the first thing he’d do would be to go to a barber and get a good shave. Another said that she would finally buy the spectacles she urgently needed. A third said that he’d take an auto to go to buy his medicines, as he found it difficult to walk.” The responses, he says, were immensely moving for they highlighted the small, niggling problems that the elderly faced every day.
Pension Parishad plans to conduct awareness meetings, workshops and protests across the country and highlight the plight of the elderly before every parliament session in Delhi. Also, it wants help more and more elderly to apply for pension. In Rajasthan, for example, the number of pensioners has increased from 14 lakh to 53 lakh since the Pension Parishad campaign. Even so, a gargantuan task lies ahead. Dey says, “Old people in huge numbers across India are in massive distress. We have to fight until they all receive their pensions — for they have little fight left in them.”
To know more, check out www.pensionparishad.org or their page on Facebook.
Next fortnight, a holistic development model that focuses simultaneously on improving infrastructure, livelihoods and economic opportunities is transforming resource-poor villages in Bharatpur
Ramlali, a widow in her mid-60s has been living with her son in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh since her husband died three years ago. She has constant quarrels with her daughter-in-law over money, but keeps her peace as she has nowhere else to go.
Parsham and Ramlali are merely two amongst India’s burgeoning population of the elderly — close to 10 crore, of which one-sixth live without any family support. The 2014 Helpage India report on the state of the elderly in India enumerates the problems that the seniors who live in poverty face – physical, psychological, social and economic. Given the forecast that between 2006 and 2050, India’s population will grow 40 per cent, while that of its aged (60 and above) will increase by 270 per cent — the problems of the elderly can’t be wished away. The solution lies in providing them adequate social security in the form of pension. The central government’s Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme allots Rs 200 per month to the elderly living below the poverty line, while Delhi government gives Rs 1,000. Is this enough for an old, possibly infirm person in the capital to survive on? Possibly not.
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In 2014, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, conducted a study on pensions across eight states: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana and West Bengal. It discovered several loopholes in the pension process — people were either not getting regular or full pensions, or the BPL/APL (below/above poverty line) categorisation wasn’t accurate, causing vulnerable groups to be left out. The pension amount was too low as well. This is what makes the advocacy of the umbrella group, Pension Parishad, a collective of over 150 organisations across India including National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and Helpage India, so significant in today’s context.
According to Nikhil Dey, convener of NCPRI and co-founder of MKSS, every time they held public audits in Rajasthan, they would “see several old people sitting patiently, waiting to be heard. Often, they’d carry bunches of papers to show how they’d unsuccessfully tried to get government pension.” This eventually prompted them to start Pension Parishad in 2012, for “there was a crying need for a uniform and well-implemented pension policy”. They were joined by Baba Adhav, the visionary activist who’s tirelessly worked to unionise unorganised workers in Maharashtra and institute a contributory pension for them in the state.
Together, they have been campaigning for a universal and non-contributory old age pension not less than 50 per cent of the prescribed minimum wage, or Rs 2,000 per month, whichever is higher. Further, the Parishad wants the monthly pension to be indexed to inflation bi-annually and revised every two to three years in the same manner as is done for salaries and pensions of government servants. They also want the pensionable age to be reduced to 55 for men, 50 for women and 45 for highly vulnerable groups such as transgenders and sex workers.
When the Parishad organised a rally at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to get the attention of the MPs attending the winter 2013 session of Parliament, the response was incredible. “So many old people turned out to demand their rights! The first day, when the lunch we were to serve them was delayed, we realised that they didn’t even have the money to buy a snack for themselves,” recollects Dey. At the meeting, and subsequent ones, the point that Pension Parishad drove home, both to the elderly and to the government, was that pension was anything but dole. It was payback for the decades that they had contributed to the nation’s economy. Pension was, indeed, their right as citizens and voters, and its denial, a blot on civil society.
“At one of these meetings, we asked our elderly participants what they’d do if they began getting the Rs 2,000 pension that we were demanding,” says Dey. “One old man said the first thing he’d do would be to go to a barber and get a good shave. Another said that she would finally buy the spectacles she urgently needed. A third said that he’d take an auto to go to buy his medicines, as he found it difficult to walk.” The responses, he says, were immensely moving for they highlighted the small, niggling problems that the elderly faced every day.
Pension Parishad plans to conduct awareness meetings, workshops and protests across the country and highlight the plight of the elderly before every parliament session in Delhi. Also, it wants help more and more elderly to apply for pension. In Rajasthan, for example, the number of pensioners has increased from 14 lakh to 53 lakh since the Pension Parishad campaign. Even so, a gargantuan task lies ahead. Dey says, “Old people in huge numbers across India are in massive distress. We have to fight until they all receive their pensions — for they have little fight left in them.”
To know more, check out www.pensionparishad.org or their page on Facebook.
Next fortnight, a holistic development model that focuses simultaneously on improving infrastructure, livelihoods and economic opportunities is transforming resource-poor villages in Bharatpur