A couple of years ago, a group of senior citizens of Salt Lake was taken pandal-hopping during Durga puja. One of them insisted on being dropped off last. Nor would she allow the volunteer from the NGO taking them around to wait while she got in. A tad suspicious, the volunteer decided to wait around the corner. After she entered, he called on her phone but did not get an answer. After reaching home himself, he again called her. There was no response this time too.

The next morning, he went to meet her. “Mashima was black and blue all over; there were dark lines under her eyes. This time, she broke down and revealed everything. Her daughter-in-law had been abusing her. When I offered to take her to the police, she cringed, saying the daughter-in-law would take it out on her son too if she did.”

Loneliness is not the only bane of parents in the winter of their lives. Some suffer from financial insecurity, being refused help by their offsprings. Others are even worse, abused verbally, emotionally and even physically by the daughter-in-law and sometimes even the son in their own house.

Minister for the department of women and child development and social welfare Shashi Panja feels that degeneration of social values and a career-oriented thought process brought about by constant pressure of performance have led to a situation where certain responsibilities are being compromised with, including looking after one’s own parents. “Children have no time for elderly parents. Also property issues are there. Earlier there were other protective mechanisms in a joint family but as exclusion and isolation began, there is nobody now to stand by you when you are being abused by your own,” she says.

“Sadly, such cases exist. Their number may be low in Salt Lake but in the five per cent houses where such problems occur, the senior citizens feel helpless,” says Kallol Ghosh of OFFER, an NGO which works in the township.

OFFER runs a programme called Saanjhbaati for senior citizens in association with the Bidhannagar City Police in which, other than providing a platform to spend quality time with their peers and support in medical emergencies, emotional and legal aid is provided through counselling and creating awareness of rights. Under this programme, a nodal officer has been appointed in every police station of Salt Lake who can be approached directly or through Saanjhbaati volunteers.

“Counselling often helps,” says Ghosh. He recalls a case where a mother-in-law from a highly sophisticated family in Salt Lake was being physically abused by her daughter-in-law but the former was too ashamed to speak up. “One day after Bijoya Dashami, I visited her with a packet of sweets and used the pretext to ask to meet her son and daughter-in-law who live upstairs in the same building. The daughter-in-law, after some casual conversation, asked if her mother-in-law had told us anything. I denied and said we felt safe that she had them to look after her. Since that visit, things have somehow improved.”

“Disputes with elderly parents are mostly about property and wealth, and sibling rivalry plays a big part. Bitterness arises if a son or a daughter thinks the parents are favouring a sibling and giving money away or willing property to his or her name,” says Anuradha Sen of Helpage India who stays in CL Block.

She points to a law that has been enacted to provide protection to senior citizens — The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. The SDO is the maintenance officer in the districts, including in Bidhannagar subdivision, and the district magistrate is the appellate authority. In Calcutta, it is the manager, headquarters, controller of vagrancy for the areas under police stations in central and east Calcutta. For areas under police stations in south and west Calcutta, it is the assistant director of the directorate of social welfare. The state commissioner of disabilities is the appellate authority for Calcutta.

The state government has formed a monitoring committee last year for the Act with the minister herself as chairperson. “There are representatives from eight departments under whose purview components of their welfare lie like health, home and panchayat as also NGOs,” Panja says.

Sen, who has successfully filed maintenance claims on behalf of senior citizens, made a presentation on the Act at a recent programme organised by the Bidhannagar Commissionerate for an elderly audience.

“Senior citizens can themselves report their grievance in front of the sub-divisional officer or whoever is the appellate authority. Lawyers are barred from the hearing, neither is there a court fee. It is the social welfare officers who help petitioners file the case free of cost,” Sen says.

She remembers a 92-year-old lady in an old age home in South 24-Parganas whose son was refusing to pay Rs 1,200 as her monthly medical expenses. “We got her her dues. The lady died a year later.”

Another case she remembers is of a widow being denied her portion of the property by her stepchildren in Barasat. “She had come with a neighbour as she was not too educated herself. All she wanted was a room in the house to stay in. Of the two sons, one was a teacher in a government school. After a hearing in the SDO’s office, the sons were ordered to pay maintenance which the tribunal decided in accordance with the income of the sons.”

The Act, she points out, can bring justice even in case the son or daughter lives abroad as long as his citizenship remains Indian. In a case in Delhi, the Indian embassy had got in touch with a son who was settled abroad after the ministry of women and child development got in touch with the foreign ministry.”

“The problem of the elderly in Salt Lake is different from most petitioners seeking justice under this Act,” points out a senior government official involved with the process. “They do not need financial aid as they are self-sufficient. What they want is to be allowed to live in peace.”

A case in point is an elderly man in Salt Lake who was fed up with the 30-odd stray cats his son had sheltered at home. “When he objected, the son threw a stool at him. The matter finally reached the police station where the son apologised,” Ghosh recalled.

“Even small matters like who would pay the electric bill or the car petrol bill can spark an altercation. Since senior citizens are sensitive, they feel insulted or neglected,” he added.

Lack of teeth

This is where the act is found wanting. “There is not enough punitive provision in the Act,” minister Panja affirmed. “The Act does not have an eviction clause that would allow a cantankerous offspring to be removed from the parents’ home,” lawyer Sourabh Sengupta, a resident of DB Block, says.

Sengupta points out that the Act has remained static in Bengal due to lack of interpretation. “In Delhi and Gujarat, however, orders have been passed where the provisions in Section 4 of the act, referring to the obligation of the children or relatives to fulfill needs of a senior citizen so that he may lead a normal life, is interpreted to pass eviction orders. They also use Section 23 which declares transfer of property void if the son or daughter does not fulfill the expectation of looking after the parent in their lifetime. In any case, adult children have no right over self-acquired houses of their parents.”

Another problem, he points out, is that the officers designated as maintenance officers being overburdened with administrative work.

The minister said her department is mulling ways to disseminate the act. “We could get the police on board as the local police station is usually the first stop of aggrieved parents. A workshop could teach them to help the aggrieved file the requisite form and reach them to the maintenance officer,” Panja said.

What needs to be done to prevent abuse of elders by offsprings?

Write to The Telegraph Salt Lake, 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street, Calcutta 700001 or email to saltlake@abpmail.com