It seems a paradox, in a country where 47% of the population is under 25 years of age. However, 70% of the elderly live in rural areas. According to government forecasts, the number of older people will go from 138 million in 2021 to 194 million in 10 years. Many older people continue to work in agriculture or depend on their children, but sometimes the police have to take care of them.
Milan () – In India, between 25 and 30 people migrate every minute, moving from rural areas to urban centers. As for those who stay in rural areas, the majority are over 60 years of age. Many live alone and work in agriculture. In some states there is talk of true ghost towns, as in the case of Kumbanad, in Kerala, where of more than 11,000 homes, 15% are closed because the owners have emigrated. There are so few children that teachers have to go looking for them and even pay families to take their children to school.
It seems a paradox, in a country where 47% of the population -of 1,400 million inhabitants- is under 25 years of age. However, population growth is not the same across India, and southern states are already struggling with aging populations due to declining fertility rates. Added to this is the migration of young people to urban centers and abroad. Data from the last census of 2011 show that 450 million people emigrated to other parts of the country. And in ten years, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, it is very likely that the number has increased (from 2001 to 2011 the increase in internal migrants was 51%). The UN estimates that by the year 2050, 50% of the Indian population – that is, 814 million people – will live in urban centers.
As a consequence, villages will continue to be inhabited primarily by people over the age of 60, an age that in India often marks exit from the labor market, despite declining mortality rates and longer average lives. According to the latest report of the National Institute of Statistics for the Third Age in India, published in 2021, the number of people over 60 years of age will increase from 138 million to 194 million in 2031, which represents an increase of 41% in 10 years. . Among them, the elderly who live in towns represent more than 73% of the population.
The states where the elderly population is concentrated are Kerala (20.9%), Tamil Nadu (18.2%), Himachal Pradesh (17.1%), Andhra Pradesh (16.4%) and Punjab (16%). ,2%).
Other government surveys maintain that in rural areas only 4.4% of the elderly live alone. However, the difference between men (1.6%) and women (7.2%) is significant.
It was also found that in small towns, 40% of the population is over 60 years of age -compared to 26% in urban centers- and continues to work, dedicating itself mainly to agriculture. A choice dictated more by necessity than by choice: only 28% of the elderly in rural areas (compared to 33% of the elderly in the city) declare themselves economically independent, a percentage that drops to 25% in the countryside and 20% in the city when the dependency is partial.
On the other hand, the percentage of elderly people who are economically dependent on their family is the same in towns as in urban centers: 47%. The vast majority declare that they depend on their children, who often migrate to the city or abroad to obtain a better salary.
According to the Agewell Foundation, India has fewer than 1,000 nursing homes. Sometimes families do not turn to them for cultural reasons. However, the residences that are operating report an increase in the number of admissions and very long waiting lists. In many cases, the elderly prefer to go to day centers that offer various services, but in “ghost villages”, where crime is low, it is usually the police who take care of the elderly.
In dialogue with the chain BBC, officers from Kumbanad village stated that they did not even remember the date of the last killing. There is rarely theft, every once in a while there is a scam, Police Chief Inspector Sajeesh Kumar V explained: “Otherwise, we mostly deal with trivial conflicts between the locals.” Police officers visit the elderly almost every day to make sure they are okay and in some cases have set up alarms to alert neighbors in an emergency.
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