As I sit and wait with my mother, for her cataract operation, it strikes me, not for the first time, how unfriendly the whole system is for seniors. At present, about 16% of India is over 50, in the next 20 years, as our demographic dividend grays, approximately 42% of our population would be over 50.

From access to public spaces, to senior friendly restaurants, from health insurance to senior social services, from hospitals to voter patterns – there has to be a change in infrastructural, commercial, and social attitudes towards this key demographic grouping.

And, I am choosing 50 and not 60 for this, because the impact of the first 40 odd years begins to tell by the 50’s, if not earlier.

I am looking at the entire process, from detection to operation, for my mother, and while the doctors and nurses are top class, the ecosystem as a whole is geared to make things more alien and less intuitive for her. My mother retired as a professor of political science, in addition to being the chief operating officer of the calamur household. She is no wilting willow. She also is from the pre liberalisation era where people read and understood government language or banking language. Despite all this, the systemic interface is forbidding. 

Try figure out health insurance , and you are possibly eligible for a Padma. In a country without a post retirement cover, and increasing life expectancy, and a complex health insurance system, the regulator needs to step in to make the process of health insurance easier for seniors. You possibly need to redefine ‘pre exiating’ condition. Right now it feels like health insurance companies have defined life as the pre existing condition.

as India grays, there needs to be a conversation on what kind of a life do we have planned for older versions of ourselves. How are we going to access government buildings without lifts. How will we access public transport. How? If we begin talking and planning now, we may be somewhat underprepared twenty years from now. If we don’t talk about this, and start making plans – our old age is likely to be miserable

(Incidentally, this is the first time I have used the WordPress editor on my phone to write and package an entire post. It is quite nifty)