Social Status and Subjective Well-Being of Tribal Elderly: A Narrative Discourse
Sixty years is determined as yardstick to designate a person as elderly in India, but that criterion has little relevance in the context of the tribal elderly due to low life expectancy. Based on the qualitative research design, the study reveals that eld
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Social Status and Subjective Well-Being of Tribal Elderly: A Narrative Discourse Koustab Majumdar, Manoj Raul and Dipankar Chatterjee
Introduction Background The recognition of elderly problems at the societal level has been reported as a recent phenomenon due to the emergence of nuclear families in developed and developing countries. The dependency among the elderly people is significantly high especially among women. The increasing dependency ratio of elderly people generates carious social conflicts (Nair 1983, pp. 383–384). The notion of elderly research has gained heightened concern among the policymakers and social scientists due to the dramatic growth of elderly population in the world and especially in India (Table 11.1). Population Census (2011) in India reported that there were 104 million elder person in India, where 53 million were males and 51 million were females (GOI 2016, p. iii). It was expected that by 2020 the elderly population (above sixty years) and it will cross 140 million, which will share 11.1% of the total population (Bose & Shankardass 2004; Cited in Nair 2014, p. 380). Between 2001 and 2011, the decadal growth rate of population was 2% while it is 36% among the elderly people. As a consequence of better medical facilities and low fertility rate, the growth of elderly population has been good enough (GOI 2016, p. 16). The issue of elderly has emerged as a serious concern in contemporary decades, especially among the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. National Sample
K. Majumdar (*) · M. Raul · D. Chatterjee Division of Rural and Tribal Development, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (Ranchi Campus), Ranchi, Jharkhand, India © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao et al. (eds.), Social Welfare in India and China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5648-7_11
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192 K. MAJUMDAR ET AL. Table 11.1 The elderly population (aged sixty years & above) in India (in millions) Source
Census 1961 Census 1971 Census 1981 Census 1991 Census 2001 Census 2011
Total Person
Female
Male
24.7 32.7 43.2 56.7 76.6 103.8
12.4 15.8 21.1 27.3 38.9 52.8
12.4 16.9 22.0 29.4 37.8 51.1
Rural
Urban
21.0 27.3 34.7 44.3 57.4 73.3
3.7 5.4 8.5 12.4 19.2 30.6
Source Adapted from GOI (2016)
Survey (2004–2005) reported that 18 million elderly people belong to below poverty line in India (Kumar & Anand 2006). However, the discourse of elderly issue within public policy domain has been included recently (Coole 2012). In this perspective, there is an incipient need to recompense elderly issues in order to prepare integrated and holistic programmes and policies especially for the welfare of the elderly people. Improved health services accelerate the growth of the elderly population in India. A sharp increase in actual elder population was reported (Table 11.2). The highest increase (27.2 million) among the elderly person was reported in decade (2001–2011). This growth was relatively higher among the female (13.9 million) than male (13.3 million) between 2001 and 2011, albeit, a slight i
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