GOA and even more so India is not a senior citizen-friendly state of the country. It is even worse if you are a senior citizen with disability. There was a time when both in Goa and the rest of India there were large joint families. In Goa the Uniform Civil Code, which provided equal rights of emigrants to both sons and daughters, kept the family together.
If not out of love and affection for elders, for the more practical reason of securing their share of the ancestral property till Liberation. Large joint families were the rule rather than the exception in Goa. This ensured that senior citizens and super senior citizens were taken care of and also to this day. Perhaps grudgingly but all the basic requirements of elders were taken care of with family members taking turns to watch out for grandparents and parents even if they lived separately and not jointly anymore.
The breakdown of the joint family has been due to economic pressures. A large number of Goans were forced to migrate to the Gulf and even to the United Kingdom and Canada due to lack of job opportunities at home. Even back home in Goa the joint family gave way to nuclear families as sons moved to cities for work and daughters got married in or out of Goa.
There are any number of old ancestral homes in Goa with only aged or very aged old senior citizen left to manage for themselves.
The even worse case sceanarios are of well-to-do children shifting their parents and grandparents to old-age homes. This has become even more rampant with the opening of several assisted living real estate for the elderly, these are merely housing complexes with facilities for the elderly and nursing care.
Today’s young adults would rather pay or invest in one of the old age homes for their parents then bear the burden of looking after them at home. The only exceptions are young families settled in the US or UK who want to invite their parents over so that they may avail of free nanny and baby sitter services from the elderly members of their family, while they continue to commute to and fro from their work place.

BIGGEST PERIL
THE biggest peril of growing old is loneliness. There are many senior citizens who may still enjoy economic security by virtue of having invested wisely for the latter years of their life. They have been cautious enough to ensure that they do not transfer all their bank account savings and property to their children while they are still alive. But economic security does not compensate for loving affection from adult children and grandchildren.
It is an irony that adult children forget all the love and affection lavished on them by their parents when they were growing up and young. Particularly in India where young adult children believe that their parents have an obligation to look after them and provide for them all their lives.
India perhaps is the only country where sons along with their wives and children continue to stay with their parents, even when they are independently well to do to stop being a burden on their parents. While children expect parents to continue to provide for them, they don’t feel obliged to take too much trouble to make any sacrifices for their elderly parents when they need help and reassurance the most.
IF you have been foolish enough not to make provisions for the last quarter of life chances are you will find yourself all alone, paying the price for not investing in your wellbeing in later years. I earned a lot of money, particularly when I started my own independent media house. I was not rich because I was an honest journalist. But neither my wife nor I thought about the future although we married late in life, so much so that when Covid-19 wiped out many media people we too were the victims and were left near bankrupt and little to fall back on by way of savings.

HEALTH ISSUES
UNDER the circumstance, any major health issue is an invitation to more anxiety and stress. Much of whatever savings I had disappeared when I fell victim to spinal tuberculosis some three years ago. For a year I neglected it thinking it will go away, but soon it was more difficult to ignore. Contrary to the general belief or perception TB does not only victimize the poor and ill-nourished.
There are any number of cases of people from very rich families, ranging from Kamala Nehru, the wife of Jawaharlal Nehru to Amitabh Bachchan, being victims of TB. Reportedly Bachchan contacted spinal TB which is rarer, but he achieved remission soon and is generous enough to be an ambassador of the Eliminate TB programs of the government.
Even a disease like tuberculosis can cripple a patient financially and emotionally. We have spent over Rs10 to Rs15 lakh over my spinal TB treatment in the last three years. Unfortunately, we are not niz Goans with the support structure of any family in Goa, no family we can call upon for help in cash or kind either.
It is clear that any support structure of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, in-laws, out-laws, friends , tend to disappear, especially if there is a continued need to be dependent on someone for support.
Of course some friends and my wife’s family members helped me out for a while with sympathy and some financial support, but it is understandable that one may not get continuous support for a any length of time. Medical treatments too have reached crisis proportions. I find that nobody knows spinal TB well enough in Goa to be able to tell me whether I’m fully cured or not. I depend on the Goa Medical College & Hospital to bail me out most often but here too there are limitations and private hospitals are of course beyond reach.
THE moral of the story is that if you are young today please look to the future when you will one day be a senior citizen. Looking after children and extended family is all fine. But your basic obligation is to yourself and your partner. In our Indian conditions we have little choice but to invest in some form of health insurance coverage in sickness. On average one may need an insurance cover of at least Rs5 crore, just to cover cost of the illness and medical cover for it.
It is equally important that the first thing you do in Goa is invest in a decent home of your own, while you are still young enough to get loans. Banks do not give loans to senior citizens. It is important you have a roof over your head for the day when you will stop earning. You need to invest early enough in real estate or bank FD or pension schemes which will guarantee you enough regular income to feel like staying alive.

I, ME, MYSELF
EVERYONE young or old has to look after himself or herself. We are increasingly heading towards an I, ME, MYSELF society which cares little or not at all about taking care of the elderly. That is the bleak truth. Old is no longer gold.