Around 82% of Elders Live With Family, Where Most Abuse Happens: India’s Invisible Crisis

Published in The Wire, 19 June 2026

In the unforgettable segment Bridge from the 2009 Malayalam anthology film Kerala Café, National Award-winning actor Salim Kumar, who died recently, portrays Manikandan, a poor, desperate son who abandons his frail, ageing mother on a bustling city street. He promises to return, but instead disappears forever across a bridge. The mother, played with heartbreaking grace by Santhadevi, is left entirely to the elements, her world shattered by the very child she nurtured. On the veranda of the café, she crosses paths with a discarded, wandering kitten. In their silent, shared companionship, the film delivers a searing metaphor for human abandonment – the painful truth that the distance between love and neglect can be as short, and as unforgiving, as a single bridge.

As the world marked World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD) 2026, under the global theme Beyond Awareness: Making Elder Abuse Prevention Work, this cinematic tragedy reads like a documentary of modern Indian life. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) emphasises that we must move past merely recognising the issue toward building robust institutions, legal protections, and community care systems. Elder abuse is a heavily hidden public health and human rights crisis. However, across India, the social and emotional safety nets meant to protect senior citizens are fraying quickly under the weight of demographic transition and changing social values. A crucial question is how far can a neoliberal state go in protecting the ageing population?

The greying horizon

Plausibly, India is undergoing an unprecedented demographic transition. The national elderly population (aged 60 and above) is surging, with the Technical Group on Population Projections estimating that senior citizens will cross 230 million by 2036. According to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Annual Report 2025–26, India is already home to well over 100 million older adults, making up nearly 9% of the total population.  While the absolute numbers are mounting, a profound north-south demographic divide characterises this growth. Central and eastern states maintain much younger populations, whereas southern states and select northern hill regions are ageing at a vastly accelerated rate. For example, by 2036, states like Uttar Pradesh are projected to hover around a 12% elderly population share, while Kerala is predicted to reach up to 23%.

Despite the cultural narrative that Indian families naturally absorb and care for their elders, data paints a completely different reality.  A nationwide survey by HelpAge India revealed a troubling paradox: while roughly 82% of older adults live with their families, the household is often the primary site of mistreatment. In that study, 35% of seniors who experienced abuse identified their sons as the primary perpetrators, followed closely by daughters-in-law.

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) documented an alarming 17 to 18% increase in elder abuse and crime cases between 2023 and 2024 alone, a trend reflected in the surging volume of calls to the national Elderline helpline.  The 2024 HelpAge India National Survey, which studied over 5,000 elderly individuals across 20 cities, showed that 65% of older Indians feel financially insecure. One in three had no independent income in the preceding year, a deficit that disproportionately affected older women (38%) compared to men (27%). Furthermore, 54% suffer from multiple non-communicable diseases, but a mere 31% possess any form of health insurance.

Ageing India

If India wants to see its demographic future, it must look at Kerala. Driven by decades of below-replacement fertility levels and the sustained out-migration of younger, working-age generations seeking employment overseas, Kerala is the fastest-ageing state in the nation. Roughly one-fifth of its residents are senior citizens—a proportion mirroring advanced Western and East Asian societies. Within the state, the greying is unequal. A comprehensive study, Growing Old in Kerala: A Gendered Revisit (2025), notes that districts like Pathanamthitta have the highest concentration of seniors, with elderly individuals comprising 18% to 20% of the population. This figure is projected to skyrocket to over 34% by 2051. Conversely, Malappuram maintains the lowest proportion of senior citizens due to its higher total fertility rate.   But beneath Kerala’s celebrated achievements in human development, high literacy, and physical quality of life lies a disturbing moral crisis. Earlier reports from major pilgrimage towns like Guruvayur and Oachira had exposed a painful phenomenon – children abandoning their elderly parents at temple precincts under the guise of taking them on a spiritual pilgrimage.  One definitive case involved an elderly woman named Padmavathi from Thiruvananthapuram, abandoned at the Guruvayur temple by her children. Investigations revealed that she, like many of the estimated one hundred destitute elders living around the temple premises, had been systematically stripped of her property before being discarded.

The systemic nature of this crisis was further highlighted when an 82-year-old mother of seven children approached the Kerala Women’s Commission in Malappuram, pleading with officials not to send her back to her son and daughter-in-law due to relentless domestic abuse. Following this case, the Commission noted that it had received nearly 300 similar complaints of elder desertion and ill-treatment within a mere three-month window.

The Legal Tightrope

This social epidemic has forced the judiciary to intervene, though the limits of the law remain apparent. In the landmark judgment Dr. Pramod John v. State of Kerala (2024), the Kerala High Court clarified the legal threshold for ‘abandonment’ under Section 24 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. The Court ruled that family disputes or relocating a parent between children’s homes do not automatically equate to criminal abandonment; rather, the offense requires proof of “total and complete abandonment” with the explicit intent to wholly sever responsibility and care.  While the ruling safeguards against the misuse of criminal law in complex family structural arrangements, it highlights a sociological reality. The vast majority of elder abuse—emotional isolation, verbal humiliation, economic exploitation, and structural neglect—happens within domestic walls, slipping through the cracks of narrow legal definitions and remaining severely underreported due to social stigma, fear, and emotional dependency.

Global and National Evidence

The crisis of elder abuse is by no means unique to India. It is a global public health priority. A sweeping, definitive meta-analysis titled Elder Abuse Without Borders (2025), published in BMC Public Health, evaluated 94 studies across 35 countries. It concluded that an astonishing 27.6% of older adults worldwide—more than one in four—experience some form of abuse. The study revealed that emotional and psychological abuse is the most pervasive, followed by neglect and financial exploitation. Regionally, South America reported the highest prevalence at 42%, with Asia following closely at 36%. This directly challenges the cultural claim that traditional Asian family values naturally insulate seniors from harm.  These figures line up with data from the World Health Organization (WHO) Fact Sheet on Elder Abuse, which notes that while 15.7% of community-dwelling elders face abuse, the numbers skyrocket to an alarming 64.2% in institutional settings like nursing homes and long-term care facilities. With the global population aged 60 and older expected to double to 2 billion by 2050, the WHO warns that without systemic intervention, the number of elder abuse victims will scale to 320 million worldwide.

Locally, a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Advanced Health Research & Clinical Medicine (2025) titled Elder Abuse Screening in Domestic Settings of Kerala: Development of a New Tool developed the Elder Mistreatment Screening Tool (EMST). In validating this 15-item scale among local families, researchers confirmed that elder mistreatment in Kerala is rarely defined by overt physical violence. Instead, it manifests as insidious psychological distress, coercive control over personal choices, disrespect, and absolute financial dependency, showing how migration and economic stress are fundamentally rewriting intergenerational bonds.

Unlocking the Silver Economy?

How do we cross the bridge from systemic neglect to active protection? The solution requires a fundamental change in perspective. For too long, both state and central policies have treated ageing through a purely welfare-oriented, paternalistic lens – viewing senior citizens strictly as passive beneficiaries of small pensions and medical aid.  The NITI Aayog Position Paper, Senior Care Reforms in India: Reimagining the Senior Care Paradigm (2024), forcefully argues that India must transition toward an integrated senior care ecosystem built upon four key pillars: health, social inclusion, economic empowerment, and digital access. Instead of viewing an ageing population as a socioeconomic burden, India must recognize its senior citizens as a vital cornerstone of the emerging Silver Economy.  “India’s silver economy is currently valued at approximately ₹10,000 crore, driven by an expanding, financially secure cohort of retirees with significant purchasing power and distinct demands for specialized products and services.” To secure the safety and dignity of elders, NITI Aayog recommends actions across three dimensions: Economic Integration: Introduce post-retirement frameworks and “grey internships” to counter the fact that 70% of elderly Indians depend on others and 78% lack pensions. Mandatory savings and affordable geriatric insurance will reduce financial abuse; Formal Care Economy: Address youth out-migration by building regulated Long-Term Care infrastructure via public-private partnerships and lowering taxes on senior care products; Community Protection: Combat the digital divide excluding 59% of seniors by deploying local Jagratha Committees to monitor isolated elders and streamline legal support. Plausibly, the NITI Aayog strategy goes beyond the welfare-based model, transferring the burden from the state to the society.

The haunting image of the mother in Bridge, sitting abandoned on a city street, remains a severe indictment of societal progress. High literacy rates, economic growth, and technological advancement mean little if our development model treats the older generation as disposable capital.

The messages from global bodies like the UN and WHO, as well as domestic agencies like NITI Aayog are similar, though varying in their strategy. Nonetheless, by building an age-friendly infrastructure, expanding legal accountability, and transforming the ageing demographic into a productive, vibrant silver economy, can we ensure that our elders live with independence and respect. It is time to dismantle the systems of neglect and rebuild the bridge of empathy, dignity, and collective care. And the role of the state cannot be, and should not be, abdicated in a country like India with the highest ageing population.