We Need To Prepare Our Society To Take Care Of An Ageing Population

We need a specific policy and a dedicated department equipped with right professionals to prepare the country’s healthcare structure towards an ageing future, says Kewal Kapoor, Director & Creative Strategist, CHAI Kreative and Return of Million Smiles (ROMS). He gives more details of the ROMS initiative and their plans to create an AI application to bolster the elderly care ecosystem in India, to Viveka Roychowdhury

What has been India's response to the demographic shift toward an ageing population?

There is a huge denial of the fact that we are witnessing a shift towards an ageing population. Neither is anybody talking about it, nor is this fact significantly highlighted. I believe as a nation and society we are not ready to accept that we are already ageing.

The semantic of ‘young India’ in popular perception continues to propagate the myth that we are largely a young country reaping the demographic dividend of a young population. We have completely ignored the fact that the population of senior citizens is also on the rise. In the long run, this will lead to a situation where the burden of dependent people will increase on the people who earn. The lack of focus on this shift implies that we are completely unprepared to meet this situation; there has been no focus to improve our elderly care structure, health structure or policy structure to address this shift. It’s going to be a catastrophic situation.

Unfortunately, the issue is not even covered in mass media. The only reference that you find of senior citizens in our news pages is when they are abused or there is a crime against them. The demographic dividend of an ageing population has neither been researched nor documented or understood. A meager pension network is not sufficient to cover all people, plus with an increasing trend towards nuclear families there will be a huge paucity of caregivers for the elders. If you merely look at available data, you will be shocked to know that we have the fastest growing above 60 population in the world. It’s like a ticking time bomb.

What has been the response of the healthcare sector like hospitals, clinicians etc?