Ageing in Rural India: A Sociological Analysis

‘Ageing population’ is a global issue. In Indian context, the majority of the Indians are still residing in the rural area. The proportion of the population aged 60 years and above was 7 per cent in 2009 and was projected to increase to 20 per cent by the year 2050. In absolute numbers, the elderly population in 2009 was approximately 88 million. These oldies are mostly living in remote villages and are linked to landless agricultural labour. These needs to work even at the age of sixties and seventies, and this labour works are only meant for their day-to-day livings. They have no other optional income source because they work and worked in the unorganized sector like agricultural landless labour. Therefore it is must for them to generate income for their own health services.

There is large share of the ‘aging population’ living in rural areas wherein source of banking is totally unavailable which make them to face social and economical problems. Moreover they don’t get introduced and facilitated with pension as the resource.

This paper focuses mainly on the 100 rural aged persons from the Kolhapur district in the state of Maharashtra. It is because the majority of the population from Kolhpaur is dependent on the agricultural sector. Researcher has used the stratified random sampling method. The sample is selected from two talukas, majorly in relation with the agricultural occupations. This research study had found that, majority of old aged persons are dependent on their children. And the poorest of the poor oldies are the special concern in terms of their needs. Almost all the sampled old aged persons of this research study do need to go through the obstacles like economy, body physique and psyche.