Answer:

Growing number of elderly people (60 years or above) in India (7.4% of total population in 2001) and various vulnerabilities they faces demands an urgent attention from policy makers and society. The elders are increasingly susceptible to issues of health care, livelihood and security. The vulnerabilities of elderly can be largely attributed to the phenomenon of migration and urbanization in following ways:

♤ Migration and urbanisation gradually weakens traditional family patterns that provide centrality and social roles for older persons.

♤ The drift away from rural areas to urban centres is not only causing a high rate of unemployment and overcrowding in towns, among other social and economic problems, but it is also contributing to the isolation of the aged in rural areas and the deprivation of their usual sources of social and economic support.

♤ Moving to plantations, mines and factories is now causing physical separation of family members, often by great distance, thus weakening the traditional family ties.

♤ The ability of modern families to care for their elderly relatives in the urban context is seriously impaired by crowded housing, limited financial resources and increasing education and employment of women, who are the main caregivers of the elderly.

♤ Urban accommodation is subject to the number of persons entitled to live in a place which mainly depends on landlord's decision pressures on families, especially where family size is large, which leads to subdivision of smaller family units (rural/urban).

The following recommendations are specially aimed at improving the living standards of older persons in India to deal with problems of Urbanisation and migration that is affecting elderly.

♤ Since older people constitute an increasing portion of the rural agriculture labour force, economic policies should aim at enhancing their farming performance.

♤ They will need credit and extension services and assistance in adopting improved farming practices and technologies that are suited to their capabilities.

♤ Efforts should be made to encourage older persons to engage in self-employment, which would not only enable them to do things at their own pace but would also encourage them to introduce innovations for productivity and profit.

♤ Cooperative ventures can play a key role in strengthening the capacity of the ageing to contribute to rural development.

♤ Although old age signifies an increase in the need for health care, there is low utilization of health care services among older people, the primary health centres

should also take care of the rural old people like the importance is given to Children.

♤ The utilisation of all the social schemes is abysmally low, therefore awareness of concessions and benefits should be made to reach them through various media, and policies should be strengthened.

Income insecurity, illiteracy, age related morbidity, and physical and economic dependency are factors that tend to make the Indian elderly vulnerable. So the approach needs to be holistic and multidimensional; at the individual, family, community, governmental and non-governmental levels.