Soft targets
Urban life is a potential health hazard for Indian silvers who have to negotiate threats on life and property from strangers, and physical and emotional abuse from relatives. Despite a slew of initiatives from law enforcement authorities and NGOs, we still have a long way to go before our streets and homes become safe, writes Arati Rajan Menon
The month of June is traditionally associated with the pearl, a stone that symbolises health and longevity. How cruel the irony - this June, newspapers in Mumbai announced a grisly roll call of death: eight silvers murdered in just four months. Reva Sanghavi, 84. Laxmi Sangoi, 74. Badrinath Kulkarni, 65. Surekha Narvekar, 72. Charan Kundnani, 79. Kamla Kundnani, 69. Sayeeda Sayyad, 65. Asha Bhosle, 60.
J une was also the month that 70 year-old Basanti was found brutally murdered in her flat near Garhi in Delhi's East of Kailash, her jewellery and cash stolen. Much to the police's surprise, the perpetrator wasn't her domestic help but her grandson, acting with an accomplice. And if you blame it on Delhi's much discussed reputation for crime, consider the fact that this January in Bengaluru, four silvers - A S Venkata Rangan, 79, and his 72 year-old wife Vasantha, Sathyabhama, 84, and her 55 year-old daughter Vijayalakshmi - were murdered in a span of 11 days in the posh suburb of Jayanagar.
Welcome to the big city. For Indian silvers, the term 'urban jungle' just doesn't begin to describe it - it's a minefield. In addition to coping with independent living and feelings of isolation, they have to negotiate very real threats of robbery, assault and even murder from strangers, and property disputes and physical and emotional abuse at the hands of loved ones. While law enforcement authorities and NGOs have responded with helplines in major cities and new initiatives to protect elders, a systematic, community-based mechanism that co-opts the police, volunteers and silvers themselves to make neighbourhoods safer continues to elude us.
This fact has not been lost on the public. In fact, sustained media outrage prompted the National Institute of Criminology & Forensic Science in collaboration with the
National Institute of Social Defence to hold a National Seminar on Crime against Senior Citizens last December in Delhi to search for solutions. Senior police officers, members of the judiciary and representatives of NGOs - including Harmony for Silvers Foundation - came together under a common platform to find ways to make urban
neighbourhoods safer for silvers. And underlying the proceedings was the need to evolve security mechanisms that remain in step with a changing social milieu.
CAUSE AND EFFECT
"The social landscape is rapidly altering with family bonds being weakened," observes Parantap Das, criminologist at the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science. "Nuclear families are mushrooming and elders have been marginalised." Of about 81 million senior citizens in India, about 28 per cent live in urban setups and many of them face fear, neglect, isolation and economic insecurity. Their vulnerability makes them soft targets for crime.
Citing recent research in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi conducted by the All India Senior Citizens' Confederation (AISCCON), Justice Adarsh Sein Anand, retired chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Courts, says, "Senior citizens have a regular routine, limited interaction with neighbours, limited access to a bank, and a tendency to shower their resources on their domestic help. These factors increase their proximity to violent and non-violent crimes, especially at the hands of domestic help and utility providers."
Manabendranath Mondal, president of the Socio Legal and Aid Research and Training Centre in Kolkata, is only too aware of this fact - through his development organisation, which works in the field of women's, children's, disabled and elderly rights, he has seen first hand the crisis of security plaguing silvers today. "Increasing urbanisation has led to a rise in crime," he says. "Criminals pick on the aged because they are easy targets. Earlier, the joint family system offered them inbuilt protection but today they have no security net. In our experience, a large number of crimes against the elderly never get reported. Many deaths involving the elderly look natural on the surface and the police or even their relatives or friends never try to probe deeper."
What's worse, as Joginder Singh, former director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), points out, is that silvers themselves are reluctant to go to the police. "Nobody expects a 70 year-old person to go to a police station and fight for justice," he says. "In India, a normal case takes between 10 and 15 years to conclude. By that time, he would either be no more or physically unable to reach the court for a hearing. Many criminals count on that and act with impunity." Singh cites the case of a 62 year-old merchant from Delhi who was looted and shot by three motorcycle borne youths on 11 April 2009 on Geeta Colony Bridge across the Yamuna - they took his bag thinking it was full of cash but the bag actually contained books.
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