Old age as a happy period of one's life free from serious family responsibilities under the loving care of children and relatives is only a dream for a large number of elderly men and women in India. Many are illtreated in the families and neglected. But many are thrown out of their houses when their utility is over or when their caregivers feel that they are a "burden" . This is what is being witnessed in Chennai city.
Helplines operating organisations, old age homes , and kindhearted individuals narrate heartrending incidents , and the media like the Times of India(TOI) bring these distressing realities before the community. Recently the TOI reported senior citizens being found dead at the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus. Many old people are found abandoned in garbage dumps, at bus terminals and railway platforms in a ragged heap, under flyovers, outside hospitals, and even in sewage canals.Some are sick or mentally ill, some are bitten by dogs and rats, some with insect-infected wounds, some with fractures, and some are dazed without knowing where they are. Cruel, some old women are sexually assaulted in the streets.
Head of an old age home says that when elderly parents are bedridden or when they suffer from serious, chronic illness, children abandon them in some families.When old age pension gets stopped due to some reason, or when there is space constraint in small apartments, children leave their parents by the wayside. Children, in many cases, get the parents admitted in government hospitals under the pretext of medical treatment, and never return to take them back; in such cases, hospitals because of shortage of beds leave them in the streets in the night. Relatives from smaller cities and towns, and also from other states leave the old men and women in bus terminals, railway platforms, temple premises , etc.
Among the abandoned old people are men and women from all social classes. Former teachers, government officials, airhostesses, and others are seen sharing the streets with homehelps, labourers and beggars till they are rescued and rehabilitated . Not all are lucky. Many spend the remainder of their lives in the anonymity of the streets , and even die on the pavements. Ironically, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act of 2007 has become a major factor pushing the parents from families to the streets by children to avoid the provisions of the Act. Whatever it be, in recent years there has been an upsurge in the number of "STREET ELDERLY". Take the country as a whole, the magnitude of homeless, abandoned elderly is humongous,
