General English - Ii

Recognising that family is the most desired environment for senior citizens/parents to lead a life of security and dignity and ensure that the progeny performs its moral obligations towards their parents who may otherwise be left uncared for and destitute in their old age, the maintenance and welfare of parents on senior citizens Act, 2007 aims at ensuring the main-tenance of older persons by their family will be a matter of right for the parents. The legislation also aims at creating an enabling mechanism for the older persons to claim need-based maintenance from their children.

Even after legally providing for maintenance by lineal de-scendents, the need for old age homes exists for the care and protection of the indigent older persons. this is becauses some older persons may be without any family support or their chil-dren may all be settled abroad, or they may not be able to live amicably with their children for any reason. The legislation there-fore, provides for the setting up of old age homes, at acces-sible places, by the state Governments in a phased manner beginning with at least one in each district, or more than one, to accomodate in such homes a minimum of 150 indigent ben-eficiaries. An increasing number of older persons, who are eco-nomically self-sufficient, are living alone voluntarily or involun-tarily. These people are increasingly becomming soft targets of anti-social elements and as such there is a need to ensure that they are provided with a suitable mechanism for protection of their lives and property. The said legislation envisages to pro-vide for the institutionalization of a suitable mechanism by the state governments for protection of life and property of older persons and senior citizens. The major cause of anxiety in old age is deteriorating health condition coupled with windling fi-nancial position. There is a need for good affordable health services. Therefore, the legislation incorporates provisions to provide better medical facilities to older persons and senior citizens.

The chief objective of the legislation is to provide for more effective provisions for the maintenance and welfare of par-ents and senior citizens of India guarente and recognised un-der the consitution of India as 'right to life and personal liberty' and 'rights to live with dignity' projection studies indicate that the number of 60+ in India will increase to 19.8 crore or more in 2030 this clearly shows that ageing has become a major social challenge and financial support, care treatment are re-quired for the older persons and senior citizens. Unfortunately, The time has come when moral obligations of children to book after their parents in their old age has to be backed by a legal obligation. That is, the state has to act as 'caring children' in place of sociological children due to deterioration of human values.