THE SUNSET YEARS
Divided by property
RAMYA KANNAN
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Some agencies in Chennai have set up procedures to deal with the increasing number of elder abuse.
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Photo: Akhilesh Kumar
Much-deserved peace: Organisations can help with intervention.
Out of a population of six million people, 10 per cent of them being senior citizens, issues relating to care of the elderly are of great significance in Chennai.
K. Radhakrishnan, Director, Dignity Foundation, Chennai, agrees. “There is no doubt that elder abuse is increasing. In fact, our helpline (044-24493165) gets about five or six calls specifically relating to elder abuse every month,” he says.
With years of experience working with the elderly, the Foundation has a set in place a meticulous system to handle calls from elders who claim they have been abused and, if necessary, provide intervention. A trained social worker and a volunteer visit the home and study the situation there. “Most of the calls we get are truly calls for help. There may be a few instances where they are not, but we do not worry about them.”
Major cause
The Foundation has also discovered that 95 per cent of the cases of abuse arise out of property disputes. “Children nag their parents to bequeath property to them even when they are alive. Some of them want all the property, denying their siblings. When the elderly refuse to do so, the abuse begins,” Mr. Radhakrishnan explains.
Senior geriatrician V.S. Natarajan agrees. He recounts the case of one of his patients from Purasawalkam. The elderly gentleman had two daughters and had split his property into three, bequeathing two thirds to his children equally and retaining one third for himself and his wife. While one daughter was settled in the US, he was living with the other daughter in Chennai.
After her business failed she kept pressuring her father to give her the one third he had retained for himself. When he refused, she picked up a heavy rod and hit him on the head. The old man rushed to his geriatrician with bleeding injuries, Dr. Natarajan says. “This was a well-educated upper middle class family. Just goes to show that social status and wealth are no immunity against being abused in old age,” he adds.
He categorises the abuse senior citizens face into psychological, verbal and physical abuse. Most persons fall into the “psychological” and verbal abuse category, while physical abuse is also not unknown. “Denying aged parents food or their recommended diet and medicines, refusing to talk to them or locking them up at home — all these constitute psychological abuse,” he says.
According to him, much of the verbal abuse is actually traded between the mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in our households, but often the older people are shouted down. Physical abuse is more common in institutional set ups, including some old-age and destitute homes, hospitals and hospices where they are being cared for.
Intervention also has to be carefully planned, Mr. Radhakrishnan stresses. The volunteers of Dignity Foundation first visit the home and make an initial evaluation. If there is indeed abuse, an interview is sought with the children (or other abusers) and they are promised help. With some persuasion, the children come around.
Since the majority of the cases relate to property disputes, the Foundation provides access to legal counsel. Retired judge of the Supreme Court, S. Mohan is on the panel and provides counselling to the seniors and their children. “Coming from a distinguished retired judge, most people tend to take the advice seriously. In about 80 per cent of our cases, we have managed to arrive at an amicable solution,” Mr. Radhakrishnan explains.
Final intervention
When even that fails, the police force comes to the aid of the volunteers. As they did recently, to intervene and save an aged woman from indignity, and the torture of her son-in-law. The old woman’s son and daughter-in-law, who were both government officials in Mumbai, had got wind of the matter and wanted to rescue her, but were prevented by the son-in-law. Stopping short of coming to blows, the son-in-law demanded money to allow the son to see his mother. Finally Mr. Radhakrishnan had to request the Commissioner of Police to help them out. Escorted by police personnel, the team from Dignity went along with the son and forced their way into the house, only to find the old woman squatting on the floor, with hardly any clothes on her. Apparently, her son-in-law had neither fed her nor provided clothes.
Indrani Rajadurai, national director, HelpAge India, points out that while elder abuse is increasing, we hardly have seen the tip of the iceberg. A number of cases of abuse do not even come into the open, simply because the abused do not have access to the outside world. “With increasing urbanisation, migration and chronic diseases, things are going to get more difficult in the next decade,” she says. With ageing and physical debility being exacerbated by chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, costs of medication and diet go up tremendously. This is a serious problem in many homes as families find it difficult to find the funds to meet these expenses.
In this context, she says the key is to spread awareness about the social development schemes offered by the government and the means to access them. Advocacy and awareness creation, right from the school level is the need of the hour, says Mrs. Rajadurai.
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