GARHMUKTESHWAR, India—They were found in gutters, on streets, in bushes. They were boarded on trains, deserted in hospitals, dumped at temples. They were sent away for being sick or outliving paychecks or simply growing too old.
Avanish Kumar approaches a man living on the street to offer transporting him to the Saint Hardyal Educational and Orphans Welfare Society, or SHEOWS, a home for the aged and unwanted, Thursday, April 11, 2024, in New Delhi, India.
This is a country where grandparents routinely share a roof with children and grandchildren, and where the expectation that the young care for the old is so ingrained in the national ethos that nursing homes are a relative rarity and hiring caregivers is often seen as taboo.
By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population of people 60 and older will reside outside the world’s wealthiest nations. India is projected to see growth among its old that far outstrips that of the young. The patient, Rajhu Phooljale, has his black pants rolled up, and around his right ankle, he has tied black thread to ward off evil. He says he is 65, but like many older Indians, isn’t entirely certain of his age.Phooljale was working as a cook and living with his wife and two adult sons when he was hit by a motorist and left initially unable to walk and permanently blinded. He could not work. His wife left him.
The scene repeats at three other sites run by SHEOWS and the constellation of other organizations’ shelters dotting this vast subcontinent.In New Delhi, about 60 miles and a world away from the dirt roads of Garhmukteshwar, a two-man SHEOWS crew inches an ambulance through the capital’s choked thoroughfares, where cows amble beside clusters of tuk-tuks and vendors pile their carts high with perfectly stacked fruit.
The ambulance arrives at SHEOWS’ newest shelter, where seesaws and swings hint at the property’s former life as a school. Atmaram is shown to a shower, where the pool of water beneath him turns brown as a caregiver scrubs his legs with a pink bar of soap. Both men are silent. The center’s staffers are a stand-in for absent families and are quick with a caring touch or extra helping of food. And as caregivers’ years here pass, each amasses memories of cases that haunt them.
As the elder Bhagat moved through New Delhi’s streets, though, he saw something new. A problem that was once concentrated in a single place, driven by religious and cultural issues on society’s edges, was now finding a foothold among a broader cross-section of people in a much wider swath of the country.
Still, economics are a major driver of abandonment. Most older people in India do not receive a pension, government assistance or health insurance and families are often looked to for support.
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