As India attempts to reap the much-touted demographic dividend, the emerging longevity dividend raises concerns regarding the availability of socio-economic and employment support for older adults. Though older Indians contribute significantly to economic, political and social domains of emerging India, visibility in mainstream policies and entitlements is still found wanting.
Not only are older adults pushed to withdraw from the labour force due to age-restrictive employment practices, age-prejudiced hiring practices and undesirable en masse retirement policies but they also face significant difficulty in re-entering the labour force for safe and gainful employment. A substantial number of rural and poorer older adults end up participating in the labour force in relatively informal roles as a recourse to overcome abject poverty, to sustain themselves and not being viewed as dependent on others.
A considerable proportion of the older adult workforce in India is engaged in low-paid jobs with poor conditions of work in the informal sector. In a typical informal economy characterised by unequal power relations, unstated terms of employment and poor conditions of work, a high proportion of rural and poorer older adults’ labour force participation is concerning.
No protection
Older workers in informal economies are also not recognised, registered, regulated or protected under labour legislation and social protection. With informalisation and casualisation of employment, declines in the multi-generational family and corresponding familial support, and with notional social security provisions, there is growing evidence of precarity. The disadvantage is acute for older adults, more so for rural older adults, and older women — who face additional gendered disadvantages.
Age-discrimination is often associated with poorer physical and mental health, increased social isolation and loneliness, poorer quality of life and even premature death. Recognising that India is on the cusp of a longevity dividend, systematic public policy interventions that move away from homogenised interpretations of ageing to meaningful understandings reflecting the reality of ageing are necessary.
The onus is to design and implement policies that are age-inclusive, equitable and supportive to older adults to experience healthy and productive ageing, enabling individual autonomy, well-being and a decent quality of life. Labour force participation in such cases is driven more by the need to earn rather than choice.
Social security programmes for older adults are usually social pensions and characterised by poor utilisation levels reflecting information asymmetry, issues in access, lack of awareness and sufficiency of these pensions. Social support and social inclusion along with training and capacity building programmes that re-skill and re-train older adult workers to obtain safe and gainful employment in an age-friendly society are the need of the hour.
Improving awareness on social security schemes and enabling hassle-free access and utilisation are useful as we comprehend longer work lives. Re-thinking the working age definition to accommodate the longevity dividend are emerging thought frames. A significant policy shift would be to re-align the argument for productive and active ageing from a needs-based approach, where older adults are perceived as passive targets, to a rights-based approach that ensures independence, agency, identity, enhances active and productive engagement and promises self-fulfilment for older adults in India.
The writer is Faculty, Public Policy, IIM Bangalore