Role of Indian Constitution in Safeguarding the Rights of Elderly Persons: A Synoptic View

Abstract

Age is a necessary stage of life that a man cannot escape unless he passes away prematurely. When a person is a child or aged, they naturally depend on their parents and the other way around. The idea of the nuclear family disrupted this regular cycle, defying a thousand-year-old Indian tradition in which parents are revered as a devout manifestation of God. This resulted in an unbalanced way of life for elderly people. When parents nowadays lose the ability to work and earn, they become a burden to their children. We have in India a Written Constitution, assigning legislative powers on issues relating to the union and the states as described in Article 246 of the Constitution at present there are no clear-cut Constitutional provisions to tackle the problem of aging directly, which not only includes the question of amelioration and promotion but also of keeping comprehensively as watch over the current and emerging aging issues and situation. Even elder jurisprudence is problem oriented without explaining the practical approach toward the target audience. This article represents the clause in the Indian Constitution that safeguards the dignity of senior citizens there.