A new luxury in India Retirement homes
March 22nd, 2008, 8:37 pm Hobby Shops
“Grandparents also want their own independence,” said the 62-year-old widow, who lives in a bustling retirement community in this southwestern Indian city. “We want freedom. We would like to travel, to pursue our hobbies.” A cultural revolution is under way in India, led by an unlikely gray-haired vanguard that is dramatically changing what it means to be old here, and what it means to be a family. In a country where family is society’s strongest cultural anchor, the thought of the elderly living alone has long been anathema, but many old people today are embracing the notion. With the economy booming, children are moving away for jobs, leaving elderly parents on their own. While some lament the breakdown in family as a sign of cultural decline, others — especially the well-off — are happy to devote their old age to themselves instead of their grandchildren. The new retirement communities are so far available only for the rich. There’s nothing between the high-end faux Florida facilities and bleak government-run homes for those with nowhere else to go. About a dozen development companies across the country offer sparkling facilities complete with badminton courts, lap pools and game rooms to the wealthiest sliver of the country’s 80 million people older than 60. “I don’t think my son or my daughter will look after me — and I’m damn happy about it,” said Minoo Shroff, 72, who lives in a housing complex for seniors in Pune, a pleasant city popular with retirees because it is more temperate than much of India. “I’m independent; they’re independent.” Seniors in India traditionally occupy a role somewhere between family pillar and dependent hanger-on, with more than 71 percent of the elderly living with their children or grandchildren, according to the 2001 national census. Grandparents can be revered keepers of family lore or ghostly presences cooking nearly forgotten recipes. But from teeming cities to sleepy villages, caring for one’s parents is to most Indians a duty as important as caring for one’s children, and home after home across the country is crowded with the same mix of generations. The arrangement is one borne out of custom and financial necessity — the Indian government provides no Social Security-type benefits and less than 10 percent of the population receives even a small pension. Experts say the new prosperity flooding into India is weakening the “joint family” system, where the next generation lived with the last, because the pace of life is speeding up and becoming Westernized. “The younger generation is very busy. They don’t have time to spend with older people,” said Harvinder Bakshi of HelpAge India, an activist group for the elderly. “The joint family system is disintegrating.” Newspapers frequently carry lurid stories of children abandoning their parents to the streets, and activists have called on the government to open more affordable old-age homes. Bakshi says his group, a major one, gets a half-dozen calls a month about abandoned seniors, which he doesn’t think is an alarming trend. Shashank Paranjape, a real-estate developer generally credited with introducing retirement homes to India, opened his first project, Athashri, in 2003 in Pune as a complex explicitly modeled on Western retirement homes. With about 1,000 residents in four branches, Athashri is a thriving community that looks as though it were plucked straight from Florida, right down to the early-bird specials. GAUTAM SINGH FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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