‘Responsible Innovation in Public Policies Oriented to Ageing Population’ in Bangladesh: A ‘Medium Human Development’ Country’s Initiatives

Bangladesh, the 8^th largest populous and a ‘Medium Human Development’ country in the world in 2016 is gradually moving to adapting with the emerging ageing context of the country. The main objective of this paper is to discuss different recent public policy initiatives for the aged population. Aged population has gradually appeared in the population-development landscape with a significant 7.5 percent which constitute an overwhelming 11.3 million people in the last Population and Housing Census 2011. A significant enthusiasm is observed to dealing with this huge vulnerable population in the urbanization-modernization induced changing milieu of a traditional society where aged people’s status and roles were diminishing. Government has declared the ‘National Policy on Older Persons 2013’. A very innovative law named ‘Feeding and Lodging to Parents Act 2013’ was enacted to legally ensure food, housing and other related maintenance provisions for the aged parents by their children. Aged people were declared as ‘Senior Citizens’ by the President of the country in 2014. The 8^th National Pay Scale 2015 has conceived an idea of a three-generation family composed of husband-wife, children and grandparents to fix proper salary structure and housing provision of an employee. The ageing issues are also addressed in National Health Policy 2011, Bangladesh Population Policy 2012. The major public policies have incorporated the ageing issues under the broad umbrella of population and development. Emphasis on increased ageing research and academic activities, increasing amount and coverage of different social safety net programmes, celebration of different ageing related days, major political parties’ awareness are some of the examples of the ongoing activities for the aged population. An attempt to understand these recent legislative, policy and planning changes is proposed here for the understanding of these adaptations with the emerging ageing society in Bangladesh.