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While India revels in the youth dividend, between 1991 and 2021, the number of people aged over 60 is expected to almost double. Since the Nineties, the life expectancy of women in India has also increased relative to men, and India has more women than men in the older age groups.

To address the issues that will affect the welfare of this increasing cohort of elderly women, the Dadi Nani Foundation Charitable Trust Foundation convened an All-India Symposium on “Grandmothers: Role and Status in Indian Families and Society” at the Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) in Pune, India. Over fifty distinguished attendees and several prominent panelists discussed these issues over a period of three days from April 4^th to 6^th, 2008.  

“In today’s world, as the younger generation moves away from the traditional joint family structure to a urban, nuclear family, the long-established role of a grandmother is changing”, said A. C. Mathur, Managing Trustee of the Dadi Nani Foundation. “We need to identify the impact of these changes on this growing and fragile segment of the population, and begin to come up with solutions that will make the transition easier in the future. We hope this symposium is the first step in making this happen.”

The conference discussed several areas affecting this aging demographic and identified solutions that need to be implemented:

• Medical Issues: With advancing age, women go through menopause and attendant health issues such as a higher likelihood of osteoporosis, but few Indian medical college syllabi pay enough attention to Geriatrics. There is a need for increasing awareness among the medial community. In addition, there is an opportunity to provide home-based health care and assisted living and hospital care for elderly women.
• Financial issues: With women living longer, they are more likely to outlive their husbands.  These women need training and assistance so that they can manage their financial affairs independently. Existing banking and insurance institutions will have to review their procedures to account for the different needs of this group. For example, current insurance contracts still do not provide women with some form of premium relief to account for their longer life expectancy.
• Social Issues: As urban Indians move to a nuclear family structure, the age-old support systems that sustained the older generation are being dismantled. New social structures need to be created, such as self-help groups or elder care housing.
• Assistive technologies: Longer life expectancy combined with the trend toward smaller nuclear families will require future grandmothers to be more independent. Making it convenient for this generation to live on their own will require that common tasks and tools around the house be redesigned to make it easier to use. Changes might include more visible and easily usable common devices like cell phones, clocks, etc.

In conclusion, P. C. Mathur, the symposium coordinator, said, “It is clear that the study of Indian grandmothers requires a broadband of academic cross-fertilization.”

The proceedings of the conference will be published and available on the Foundation’s website, www.dadinani.org.