Caring for Kashmir’s Senior Citizens Is a Moral Test We Cannot Fail

Credit By: ZAHID QADRI

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• 30 Apr 2026

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In a society that prides itself on respect for elders, silence, neglect, and indifference are becoming our most dangerous betrayals

There was a time in Kashmir when old age carried dignity almost by default. An elder in the family was not seen as a burden, but as a blessing — a keeper of memory, wisdom, restraint, and prayer. Their presence gave shape to the household. Their word mattered. Their experiences were consulted in times of confusion. They were the moral spine of the home.

Today, that picture is changing — and changing fast.

Behind the language of tradition and respect, many senior citizens in Kashmir are living lives marked by loneliness, neglect, financial insecurity, poor healthcare, emotional abandonment, and silent suffering. This is not merely a family issue. It is not just a private sadness hidden behind closed doors. It is a growing social crisis. And if we continue to look away, we will be forced to admit a deeply uncomfortable truth: a society that cannot care for its elderly has lost something essential in its conscience.

Jammu and Kashmir is ageing. According to the India Ageing Report 2023, around 9.4% of J&K’s population is aged 60 and above, and the Union Territory also has one of the highest life expectancies at age 60 in the country. This should have pushed us to prepare better systems of care, stronger community support, and dignified public policy for our elders. Instead, we have allowed reality to move faster than our response.

The first and most painful problem is loneliness.

Kashmir has long taken pride in the culture of close-knit families. But social structures are shifting. Younger people move away for work, study, or opportunity. Joint families are weakening. Urban life is becoming faster and more individualistic. Even within homes, screens have replaced conversations. For many elderly people, especially widows, those living in villages, and those with mobility issues, the day now passes not in companionship but in waiting — waiting for a phone call, waiting for someone to sit beside them, waiting to be heard.

This loneliness is not sentimental exaggeration. It is a public health issue. Reports and commentaries from Kashmir have pointed to growing isolation among older adults, worsened by digital exclusion and the erosion of traditional support systems.

When an elderly person is cut off from social life, the consequences do not remain emotional alone. Isolation feeds depression, anxiety, fear, forgetfulness, and even physical decline. A person can survive on medicine and food for some time, but no one can age well without human presence.

In Kashmir, the emotional burden carried by senior citizens is even heavier because it is layered over decades of collective pain. Many of today’s elderly have lived through conflict, uncertainty, bereavement, displacement, and the long strain of watching society change in painful ways. Mental distress in Kashmir is already known to be disturbingly high. A widely cited survey found that around 45% of adults in the Kashmir Valley showed signs of mental distress, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. If this is the baseline condition of society, then one can only imagine the internal world of an older person who is frail, dependent, grieving, and alone.

And yet mental health among senior citizens remains almost invisible in public conversation.

We speak of blood pressure, diabetes, joint pain, and heart disease — and rightly so. But who speaks of the elder who has stopped talking after the death of a spouse? Who notices the man who repeats the same story because he has no one left to listen? Who asks whether the old woman staring out of a window all afternoon is suffering from depression rather than simply “old age”? In Kashmir, old people are often expected to endure quietly. Their sadness is normalized. Their silence is mistaken for acceptance. Their suffering is buried under the dangerous phrase: “This is how life is in old age.”

No, it does not have to be.

Healthcare is another area where our failure stands exposed. Much of Kashmir, especially rural and hilly areas, still lacks age-sensitive healthcare infrastructure. Older adults struggle not only with disease but with access itself — difficult terrain, weak transport links, harsh winters, and dependence on others to travel to hospitals. For a younger person, a hospital visit may be inconvenient. For an elderly person, it can feel like an expedition.

What makes matters worse is that Kashmir still lacks a robust, visible, and accessible system of geriatric care. The needs of older adults are not the same as those of the general population. They require regular monitoring, home-based support where possible, attention to multiple chronic illnesses, physiotherapy, mental health screening, and, above all, continuity of care. Yet most elderly people are left to navigate general outpatient departments that are already overcrowded and overstretched. This is not care designed for ageing. It is ageing left to fend for itself.

Then there is the question of money — often the harshest reality of all.

Many senior citizens in Kashmir survive on modest pensions, irregular support from children, or small lifetime savings that quickly vanish in the face of illness. Government pension enhancements are welcome, including provisions that raise support for the oldest old under certain schemes. But let us speak honestly: for an elderly person dealing with medicine, winter heating, food, transport, and sometimes paid care, financial support remains far from enough. Worse, awareness and access are uneven. Many elders struggle with paperwork, digital systems, and administrative barriers. A welfare scheme that exists on paper but is difficult to access does not deliver dignity; it delivers frustration.

The tragedy is that Kashmir does not suffer from a lack of values. It suffers from a failure to translate those values into structures.

We still say we respect our elders. We still invoke them in speeches. We still celebrate them in language. But respect cannot remain ceremonial. Respect must be measurable. It must mean that no elderly person goes untreated because the hospital is too far. It must mean that no widow lives forgotten in a village because her children are elsewhere. It must mean that no old man is humiliated while trying to access a pension he is entitled to. It must mean that community life does not end for a person simply because their hair has turned white.

So what must be done?

First, the government must move beyond symbolic concern and build a serious elderly-care framework for Kashmir. This means dedicated geriatric services in major hospitals, mobile medical units for remote areas, regular health camps focused on senior citizens, and stronger primary healthcare follow-up for those living with chronic disease. Senior citizens should not have to depend on luck, connections, or family strength to receive basic care.

Second, mental health support for the elderly must become a priority. Doctors, ASHA workers, and community health teams should be trained to identify depression, anxiety, dementia, and severe loneliness among older adults. Mental health services in Kashmir are already under pressure, but that is not an excuse for continuing neglect. Community-based counselling, outreach, and referral systems can save people from years of hidden emotional collapse.

Third, the idea of community must be rebuilt at the mohalla and village level. Senior citizen clubs and helplines have been mentioned in official efforts, but they must become active, visible, and accountable rather than token announcements. Every locality should know who its vulnerable elders are. Religious institutions, local committees, volunteers, students, and civil society groups can help create regular visitation networks. Sometimes care begins not with a policy file, but with a knock on the door.

Fourth, families must confront their own moral responsibility. Modern life is difficult; migration is real; economic pressure is intense. But none of this justifies emotional abandonment. Sending money is not the same as offering care. A parent who once walked miles for their children should not spend the last years of life feeling unwanted in their own home. We need a cultural correction. Our children must grow up seeing elder care not as inconvenience, but as duty, gratitude, and character.

Fifth, the media must give this issue sustained attention. Senior citizens should not appear in newspapers only on World Elder Abuse Awareness Day or through sentimental feature stories. Their lives deserve reporting, investigation, and policy scrutiny. We need stories from villages, towns, hospitals, pension offices, and homes. We need to know how elderly people are actually living — not how we imagine they are living.

A society is not judged by the height of its buildings, the speed of its internet, or the sharpness of its political slogans. It is judged by how it treats those who are weakest, slowest, and most dependent. By that measure, the condition of many senior citizens in Kashmir should trouble us deeply.

These are the people who carried families through hunger, snow, uncertainty, and grief. They tilled land, raised children, preserved faith, and held communities together in harder times than many of us can comprehend. If their final years are spent in isolation and neglect, then our progress is a hollow claim.

Kashmir must decide what kind of society it wants to be.

One that remembers its elders in speeches? Or one that stands beside them in life?

The answer cannot wait. Because ageing is not somebody else’s future. It is ours. And the way we treat today’s senior citizens is the clearest preview of the world we are building for ourselves.

If we fail them now, we are not just neglecting a generation. We are warning our own future that it, too, will be abandoned.

(Author is a social activist and freelancer working in Delhi)