 "LS polls: Share of senior citizens in voting age population highest ever")
Sabita, 62, voted for the first time in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. A high school graduate and a homemaker, she and her husband travel on a bike to vote at a polling station near their home in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Sabita (name changed on request) is keeping tabs on promises made by various candidates in her constituency and national security issues are close to her heart.
She wants the Election Commission (EC) to erect more sheds at polling booths for senior citizens voting in the summer sun. People older than 60, like Sabita, comprise almost 16 per cent of the voting age population in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, shows an analysis of United Nations population data that goes back to the first national elections in 1951-52. Senior citizens comprised around 11 per cent of the voting age population in the first elections. This year, their number is the highest in any national election.
The analysis considers all senior citizens, but not everyone of them may have registered to vote. It found that the share of female senior citizens among the voting age population is at its highest in 2024 at 8 per cent (charts 1,2).
India’s elderly is growing at its fastest rate in this decade since the sixties. Between 1961 and 1971 the growth rate was 32 per cent and spiked to about 41 per cent in the ongoing decade. The projections, reported in the ‘India Ageing Report 2023’, are based on data drawn from the Census of India 2011.
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Nilanjana Goswami, assistant professor at the department of humanities and social sciences in BITS Pilani, Goa, said India reflects a global trend. “Within this elderly demographic, it is noteworthy that two-thirds reside in rural areas, and nearly half are classified as having a disadvantaged socioeconomic status,” she said.
Southern and Western India are ageing faster than the rest of the country. The proportion of elderly population relative to children (younger than 15) is the highest in the South at 62, followed by the West at 49. The proportion nationwide is 39. Central, Northeastern and Eastern India have relatively younger populations.
“Voter turnout rates (among people) above 60 years have not been any different than other age brackets. But once you cross over 75, then the turnout rates drop because of multiple reasons like ill health, inability to walk to a polling station,” said Rahul Verma, a political scientist and a fellow at New-Delhi based think tank Centre for Policy Research.
Population shifts are slow and do not have a dramatic bearing on election outcomes, he said.
Goswami said the elderly consider voting as a “fundamental political right and a matter of individual choice.”
“However, elderly individuals especially those with physical limitations like mobility issues or lost eyesight face challenges in exercising this right. Assistance provided to them sometimes results in their choices being influenced or overridden, impacting their independence in decision-making. Polling stations often lack accessibility for elderly individuals, further complicating their ability to reach the voting booth” she said.
Uneducated elderly voters, especially in the rural areas, are “exploited by others to manipulate their access to government policies and benefits,” said Goswami.
For the first time in a Lok Sabha election, the EC has in 2024 extended the facility of postal ballots for those older than 85: For their convenience and to increase voter turnout.
India has a relatively lower proportion of senior citizens among the voting age population compared to its peers holding elections this year. Over a third of the voting age population in the United Kingdom and the United States are senior citizens. Russia too has a larger share of senior citizens than India among the voting age population. But in South Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh such populations comprise a much smaller proportion (chart 3).
(This is the second and concluding part of a series.)