Everyday Life of the Caregivers for the Aged with Dementia: A Study in Kolkata

Abstract

Dropping rates of marriage and fertility, and the growing demands for individual autonomy of the members of the younger generation, have significantly undermined the conventional practice of shared family life in the West, which, despite not having a material crisis, has left the elderly population in the midst of a care crisis. The Western neoliberal democracies have introduced state-initiated care packages to address the crisis. In India, since the last decades of the last century, and particularly in the phase of post-1991 globalisation, the drop in fertility rate, which results in population greying and the dispersal of the younger members within and outside the country, has made a similar care crisis loom large. However, the Indian reality is still significantly different from that of the West on at least three counts: (1) the family bonds, and at times, kinship relations constitute the primary foundation of care, (2) the new neo-liberal phase of withdrawal of state support and rising cost of living because of promarket reforms and disinvestments, have added to the precarity of the middle class, and (3) the state in India is largely silent on the statesponsored care packages for the elderly population, who live in serious care crisis. Against this social backdrop, the present paper examines the ground realities of the lives of the caregivers, their problems and sufferings in particular, for the middle-class elderly population suffering from dementia. The findings of the paper are based on an empirical qualitative study of sixteen families with cases of dementia.