India is supposed to be a young nation. more than 50% of the population is below 25 years. It is the youngest nation and it is going to stay that for quite some time. In this being young, we can very conveniently ignore the old. The number of people who are old is not small.
The estimates are like this : in the next 10 years, that is by the year 2020, we will be a 133 crore population country. To my mind, this itself is a lower estimate. However, even if we take this estimate, about 7.6 crores of these people are going to be 65+ years. 37 crores are going to be under 15 years old. 88 crores are going to be in the age group 15 to 64 years. By 2050, about 25% of the population will be 60+ years.
Now, let us focus on the 7.6 crore people who are going to be 65+ All of them are currently 55+ years old. A lot of them are looking at retiring in the next 5 years. A lot of them are already bewildered at the rate of change. A lot of these people are clueless about social networking. Though some of them are savvy, a vast majority of these people don't know what facebook is all about. A vast majority of these have not operated internet. For a vast majority of these, even mobile phones are alien.
All of them are going to be 65+ and are going to be very very lonely.
Just look at the number of news items showing dissent of the young people with their parents.
In TN, there is an actress, (Saranya), who goes missing and her mother files a complaint with police. The actor daughter surfaces and clarifies saying that her mother is torturing her.
Another actor's daughter (Vanitha Vijayakumar) accuses her parents of threatening her with life for the past 15 years.
There is enough and more news in the papers of sons and daughters chasing their parents away.
The number of old age homes is increasing.
What was a 700 odd number in 1998, by now, must have reached 2000+ mark. In the net, no clear stats are available on the status of number of old age homes in the country.
Another reason why these old age homes are flourishing is very interesting. In the previous generations, people used to have 5 to 6 children at least. In their old age, even if they were not happy with one son and the respective daughter in law, they will move to another son. Even if they were happy somewhere, they still kept on moving around.
I remember my grandma, living with us for a few months and then moving onto living with my uncles for a spell of a few months each. This used to happen in almost every family across India. One lived with the eldest son for a couple of months, then with the next son and then a few days with a daughter and then back with the next son for a few months and so on.
This had the effect of lowering the 'burden' on each of the wards and also ensuring that the old people had someplace to go even if at one place they were not entirely happy or some quarrels happened.
This simply does not happen anymore. Already, the current crop of grandparents are having lesser number of children than their previous generations. The current crop of parents have one or at best 2 children only. Which means that the kind of safety valve which was there earlier is not available anymore.
Suddenly, the grandparents become a burden on their sons and daughters. And, worse, they have nowhere else to go.
The old people end up feeling increasingly lonely, bewildered and lack companionship. Increasingly, the computer at home means that even the children, who would otherwise have given them company, don't anymore.
Even the grand children, who, in the previous generation would have listened to stories from their grandparents, now, play video games or are already on facebook with their friends.
It is going to be frightening to be old in this country. The country, where elders were respected and extended family was the norm, is fast becoming full of nuclear families where the old have no place.
So, it is very simple to see the next trend : No place to be old in India...
It is sad...but that seems to be the situation. If you are wealthy old man, you can at least get into a decent old age home. If you are not so wealthy and cannot afford a good old age home, well then...God help you...
Let us see what this means for different set of stakeholders in India. For entrepreneurs and marketers, it means huge opportunity. They can and I am sure will make a difference in this also. There will be corporate sponsored old age homes soon. There will be pension funds which will enable one to get into a decent old age home in his choice of geography. There will be insurance companies which will help people to settle down with endowments for their old age. There will be home and realty builders who will take your house back on lease back arrangements to enable you to live peacefully in your old age. There will be a host of appliances which will target the old people to live by themselves without any help from anyone during this period of loneliness. There will be laws ensuring specific comfort levels for the older people when they travel, when they commute from one place to another and so on.
There may even be awards for youngsters who regularly go and visit their parents or grandparents in the old age homes...sounds cruel but that would be better than such a thing not happening at all...
