As the annual union budget presented by the finance minister on Tuesday received mixed reactions from different sectors, the senior citizens welfare associations have expressed discontentment with this year’s annual budget. Organisations said that the budget is a big setback for senior citizens claiming that it has totally neglected and ignored the elderly population of 149 million Indians.
Various groups working for the welfare of the senior citizens have expressed displeasure against the union budget especially after the Economic Survey report 2024 had strongly mentioned urgent need for structured elder care policies in the country. Additionally the Niti Aayog report of 2023 on Age Care also highlighted the urgent need to address issues of the ageing population in the area of Health Care, Social Engagement, Financial Stability and Security and Digital wellbeing.
Sailesh Mishra, founder president of Silver Innings organisation, said that the government has not considered any of the choices made by the senior citizen welfare groups since a long time. He added that the government did not consider any of their demands including restoration of railway concession for senior citizens, withdrawal of 18% GST on medical insurance, Ayushman Bharat scheme for all seniors, increased old age pension of Rs. 3000/- to all non taxpayer seniors, implementation of National Policy of Senior Citizens, National Dementia Policy for fast growing non curable brain disorder and passing the pending amendment bill of Senior Citizens Maintenance Act.
“Our finance minister and prime minister are themselves above the age of 65 and still they did not find it worthy to acknowledge the 60-plus population. We expect empathy and not sympathy from our lawmakers. We need concrete steps from the government with adequate budgetary allocations for safety, security, human rights and dignity of 149 million Senior Citizens,” he added.
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Prakash Narayan Borgaonkar, chief executive officer of the Aaji Care Sevak Foundation, working for the welfare of senior citizens from 2012, said that on one hand the government comes up with tirth yatra schemes for the elderlies but on the other hand it totally forgets them in the union budget. He said that the government has missed on bringing the constitution of the Employment Bureau of Senior Citizens.
“These days we are listening to talks about age friendly cities everywhere with structures comfortable for the senior citizens but the budget is not age-friendly. Senior citizens do not demand much but they will expect that the government will spend around 9-10% of the budget on the welfare of senior citizens, who are projected to be around 11.5% of the total population of the country. There has been no census after 2011 and without the census of the population of senior citizens, we are just making policies in the dark,” he added.
Vijay Aundhe, the vice president of the Federation for Senior Citizens Association of Maharashtra said that the budget is the worst budget ever for the senior citizens. He said that many parties had included senior citizen welfare schemes in their manifestos after the senior citizen associations released a manifesto before the Lok Sabha elections but nothing reflected in the union budget.
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“The budget is very disturbing for senior citizens like us as we were expecting that after taking so many facilities away from us, they will at least provide something in this budget but our hopes have been shattered. The earlier budgets were still better than this as this year we have been made to feel that they do not consider us in the budget. They are not taking care of such a huge population probably because they think we can not do anything. Now we will come back with our demands in a more vocal manner,” he added.
Maharaj Krishna Raina, founder of Shehjaar Homes For Senior Citizens which has been running old-age homes in different parts of the country since 2005 said that the government has not considered senior citizens as they think it is a waste of money. He also expressed hope that once the voices of the senior citizens across the country will be unified, things will change for the better.
“We had expected that this budget would at least provide us the railway concession back which was stopped during Covid pandemic. Or the government could have launched some small scheme for our welfare but we see that there is a total indifference towards the senior citizens. They talk about the dignity of the senior citizens but they think it is a waste of money to allocate some part of the budget for us. We are told that we will be the third largest economy in a few years but nothing seems to be changing for us. Hopefully, we might see a unified voice of the seniors and things will change,” he added.
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