India has a complex social fabric, the middle class thinks they are equivalent to the rich, yet they don’t have the purchasing capacity, whereas the poor accept anything which comes free irrespective of the quality. 

The cost of basic living is somewhat same across all economic strata, however the affordability of specialized care is the differentiating factor. Unfortunately cost of basic food items do not differentiate between the poor and the rich.

Talking about Old Age Care, Senior Living is going to become a big industry in the next 2 decades. Unfortunately many of us will not be able to afford living in Sheltered Housing or other formats of Housing with Care. The logic is simple, most of us will not have the money to afford living in senior citizen care homes.

In today’s time, an average lower middle class senior living facility costs about 25-40 thousand, the so called middle class facilities are pegged at 50-75 thousand and specialised care or the high end senior living facilities charge anything between 90 thousand to 1.5 lakh per month.

The larger point of debate is, how many senior citizens will be able to afford Senior Living in the coming decades? Since 70% of India resides in the rural areas, majority of them will not have the financial bandwidth to afford senior living in their golden years.

Assuming that an elder requires supervised care for 10 years, as per back of the envelope calculation, it will cost them anywhere between 75 lakhs to 2 crores over a period of 10 years.

Looking at these figures, I really do not know, how many of us will be able to afford supported residential care in the next decade.

If the government or private sector do not come up with affordable senior living options, then in my views, majority of older people will be living alone without any supervision.

As a country, if we do not wake up to the ticking and exploding problem, then it is quite possible that we might see the middle class and the underprivileged elderly living on the roads, outside hospitals or in charitable shelter homes.

Pankaj Mehrotra