Urban Elderly – the Invisible&

Their Livelihoods

Mathew CherianChief Executive

Status of the Urban Elderly Poor• 62% of the elderly dependent on financial support

from children for their survival – 23% among poor!! Poor make ends meet.

• “Not being treated as productive” or “Being Idle” major complaints of the elderly

• 79% of Elderly “leisure” time of 4 hours a day• 92% of the Urban elderly do not have health

insurance of any kind – 98.7% among Poor• 78.3% Urban Elderly Poor feel insecure –

“health problems”, “shortage of money”, “living alone”

93% of India’s Elderly have to work till they dieUn-organised Sector & devoid of Social Security Cover

How they came & What they do• Majority of elderly were full time small scale agriculturalists before

migrating to urban areas. • Most had been resident in urban areas for between ten and sixty years. • Reasons for migration - seeking work; because of or for marriage; with

Children; and for medical treatment. • Urban livelihoods activities as diversified as rural livelihoods options,

especially for women. • Elderly physically fit men engage in daily labour, Rickshaw pulling ,

construction; Low skill jobs – carpentry, plumbing, Shoe Repair and as Watchmen (a recent phenomenon) as well as petty trading.

• Women cited multiple work options including: daily housemaids and cooks; petty trade – vegetable vending; piece-rate wages – beedi rolling, embroidery, papad making (Lijjat mode), tea/snacks selling; and the more physically demanding wage labour.

Preferences - Voices“I do not depend on my family or neighbours. If I don’t work and if no one helps me out, I will not survive.” “I want to work, my knees may no longer function, but my hands and head still do.”“if we could, we would work and earn our own living so that we could take care of ourselves”• “we don’t even get enough to meet our own needs, it

would be impossible to save. When I was working, I could care for my family of eight. Now a days, there are more times that we don’t eat than when we do.”

The Spirit“it was within our culture and tradition to help older persons, but these days things are changing for the worse for older persons”

“my children are all good but they are all poor, do daily labor, and I love them because they work hard. But lack of Credit and business

opportunities makes it hard”

“It is better for us to be able to take loans and work and become self sufficient than depend on others for charity. We will only advance in our life by being allowed to become economically independent”

“Banks do not exclude or discriminate against older persons due to age, but rather exclude according to economic inability to meet conditions for savings and/or loans”

Limited in AccessBanking services or access formal savings and loans opportunities :– Lack of capital for savings– Lack of capital for small business expansion and/or

development– Lack of understanding of how these institutions could be

economically helpful to them– access to information on specific services.

“We will not borrow from them (formal sources) because we are fearful of repercussion for late or non payment and the loss of our reputation if we are not able to repay”

Rural – Urban Continuum

• Rural patterns of engagement are translated from a rural into an urban context

• Creating neighborhoods and social groups paralleling rural collectives

• Potential exists of making them into collectives for livelihoods.

Opportunity

Re-Skilling for Changed Contexts – Literacy Levels

In “Good”Health – Self Perception

Re-Skilling for Changed Contexts – Literacy Levels

Physically Mobile

Re-Skilling for Changed Contexts

Challenges

• Identity issues need to be resolved• Pilots – far and between.• “Pilotitis” – ailment of pilots never

mainstreaming