Existing Legal Protection Available to Senior Citizens: An Indian Context

Abstract

Senior citizens are the treasure for our society. They are a link of past, present and future. As they lived their life, they saw past and pace of progress throughout their life, they are in a better position to evaluate the present and predict about the future. They are the senior members of the family who know better about the religion, family history, values and related customary practices. They possess better understanding of the family values and society. They pass these family values and societal knowledge to the upcoming generations. This was an automatic system of Indian family system to disseminate the past values and knowledge. Young generations while living in their own ways and style, also kept these values and information and lived their life. This is how our society moved on and still following the path.

But now a day’s condition and situation of senior citizens are no more similar. With the decay in cultural values and westernization of Indian society, occupational needs and professional lifestyle, senior citizens are losing the respect and dignity which they earlier had. Presently our information technology field is changing very fast and young generation a very friendly to the technology. They can get any information by a single click of mouse. They can also get information about the past social values, culture and family system. Since the information is easily available and accessible which earlier, could be received only by a senior member of the family. I find this it as a major reason for the ignorance of senior citizens in the family by the young children.

In present Indian society, nuclear families are growing and it is happening sometimes by choice, where the young couple decides to live their married life alone in the name and lust of modernism and sometimes by compulsion where earning member of family is bound to leave the home due to occupational needs and compulsion. In both the cases senior citizens with spouse or alone, are bound to live a lonely life. In first case, senior citizens are obviously ignored but in the second case they are not. But the consequences of both the situations are same i.e. loneliness. Though, the mental status of senior citizens in both the cases may vary.