India's Walking Stick Cracks

Sama

India's Walking Stick Cracks

"NEW DELHI -- Prem Awasti, like most people in tradition-bound India, expected to finish her life in the customary way: relaxing in her eldest son's home and playing with her grandchildren.

Instead, the 75-year-old mother of five and her husband, Baboolal, have for the last year occupied a pair of cots in an old-age home for the destitute on the fringes of New Delhi.

"I thought a big family was an investment in my old age," she said. "I brought them up with love and care. But it was not in my fate that they would look after me."

Throughout India, seniors are in trouble...."

Sunday's Chicago Tribune (don't think you have to register to read it....)

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Aishah

There have been programmes on TV about this - not sure this particular couple - and about old people forced onto the streets because their children won't look after them. A sign of the western nuclear family, the scattered generations, India's emergence into modernity?? Seems very sad doesn't it and I think a lot going for traditional values and keeping them.. The awful thing here is the lack of government care for the aged unlike in countries with good Social Services, non-corruption.
A lot of sweeping generalisations here and of course it all comes down to individual cases, but if this is to be the next change in Indian culture, I can't see much help coming from the government.

capt_mahajan

YG, you do have to register there.

Indian middle class families have been under pressure for sometime. Decline of the joint family, urban living, children working far away, sometimes abroad, life span increasing.. and some old values and responsibilities under threat.

But then, if we embrace commercialism so wholeheartedly, then perhaps we start evaluating human relationships only in terms of money.

Aishah

"evaluating human relationships in terms of money" - perish the thought! Unfortunately, and it has probably been aired before, but the No 1 god in India seems to be money..an understandable obsession when you don't have any. And if you do, then the demands on it by many family members makes life difficult for the major breadearner.

capt_mahajan

That God is worldwide; it may be the only universal 'god'.

rangss

http://www.saveindianfamily.org/blog...buse-in-india/

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1081502

Two articles that discuss Elder Abuse.

The first one discusses a major loophole in the Indian Penal Code...Section 498A. This section was added to provide a legal rescue to those women harrassed by their in-laws for dowry. However, a reverse trend is very much in place where daughters-in-laws have misused the section to harass their in-laws.

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robotvoice

I don't think I am steering too far off course here to ask, is this not just a facet of creeping westernization that is happening in India and elsewhere? Does t.v and film help shape attitudes and choices people make? Do channels like HBO provide mindless entertainment or do they bring in poisonous idealogies?
Sorry, let me slow down a bit. It's just that it is so very sad to see India begin to mimick the "me" based culture of the west, whose values are so skewed and opposite to the eastern fundamentals.
Tradition is not something that is invincible, and to see it being eroded beforre ones eyes is a difficult thing. When traditional values become impractical they are discarded, but at what cost?

crvlvr

haven't they passed some laws recently that make it illegal for children to not care for the parents?

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-135574529.html

Capt, here is a link to the article that does not require registration

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...705322.stor y

Digital Drifter

My personal viewpoint is, that elder care in India is economic based,not in terms of money but in the ability of the family to take care of the elders. There is simply no way without access to decent source of income, elders can be taken care of.

Harshly, it's like the economic value of a farm animal. At some point, families decide elders are not worth caring about. Abandonment, old age homes, only child working abroad are some of the things which are pretty common now.

Of course, there are lots of cases of people just bumping of their elders for the money too; my point is more along the lines of elder care. Families are in a bind over the cost. And I'm not defending OR accusing them.

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Nick-H

Partly, yes.

But it is also cracks appearing in the PR job that India has given the rest of the world for a long time: perfect families, arranged marriages all work, families live, multiple generations in harmony and respect....

Like child abuse in the 'west' over the past decades. Nothing new, just come out into the open.

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capt_mahajan

crvlvr, thanks for the link.

Nick is spot on; the westernised bit robtovoice refers to has been partly responsible for surfacing the problem, counter to the PR/

Though I have a feeling the PR was on the supposed 'emotional support' front, which was overstated. I think now even financial support for aged parents is declining. Longer lifespans, different priorities...whatever.

And DD, the costs you refer to have gone up, also because parents often want to live independently or geographically mobile working children find it difficult to have parents living with them. And the cost for maintaining two establishments becomes higher.
Earlier, even in cities, it was not unusual for a large joint family to live under the same roof, sharing resources, even with some friction. This is no longer common.

machadinha

Sometimes with these news sites if you set them to allow cookies they'll work.

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icetea

I don't think this has so much to do with "mimicking" western "values" (I also somehow have a feeling that these are not necessarily the HBO-watching type of people). It's more about the course of modern life taking its toll on joint families. Different priorities, different pace of life creep in and crack the fabric of traditional family life.

Most social problems have an economic base, and there is no way that the increasing number of people working away from their hometowns, or the increasing number of working women won't have a profound effect on traditional family life. I know I'm deviating a bit from the topic, but it's for ex. not uncommon that parents refuse to move from the place where they lived their entire life, in order to move in with their children. Also, as women start to earn considerable amounts they become much more powerful in the household, and they are often less willing to stand the usual hassles with the in-laws.

"Cold-blooded" western values didn't get to be what they are out of the blue, its just the effect of economic development over time. It's not like we never lived in joint families, in the course of history. Our grand theories about the need for independence and the right to decide about one's life are mostly post-factum rationalisations.

There aren't any "western values" regarding family life, it's all about practicality of life in the modern context. And sadly all societies are headed that way.

kalumama

Nicely summarized Icetea.

mt.kailash

The nonsense about "western values" is particularly annoying and inaccurate.

Hindu widows traditionally have a very poor status.Their presence is unlucky ,their company is shunned-that they have survived their husband is some peculiar insult to propriety.

Traditionally the answer was sati. The woman was burned on the funeral pyre with her husbands remains.As an additional refinement to this barbarity the funeral pyre is lit by the man's -and usually the woman's- eldest son,making him a matricide.
(the notion of widows 'throwing themselves' on funeral pyres is purple prose.The woman kneels on the pyre and her husband's head is placed on her lap,then the fire is lit)

A widow was sometimes -esp if young and childless- made to marry her deceased husband's younger brother.

If a widow remained in the house she had to follow a life of abnegation and self denial.
She would wear white, leave her hair undressed, eat one meal per day,eat no salt,etc,etc,She would take no part in any social or family event since she was an unlucky person.

Even when I first visited India in 1975 there were many elderly women beggars.(elderly women are the only beggars I ever give money to)Most were widows shunned by their own families as useless mouths to feed and put out on the street.
Interestingly ,in Varanasi ,I came across an institution of some sort where elderly widows lived out their days living, bathing and begging by the Holy River.They lived in cells about the size of a medium sized wardrobe.Again most had been sent there by their families with orders not to return home.
Anyway ,all this stuff is obvious to anyone who has spent any time in India and done more than trot around the Lonely Planet banana pancake circuit.
My own Mother in law recently died after spending almost 2 years in a home after suffering from Alzheimers.In spite of my father-in-law wanting to look after her at home, the 'social work dept' ordered her into residential care where my father-in-law was charged £600 (Rs50000) per month for his wife's keep.
This is what is more likely to happen in THIS part of the west.