Urban Wealthy Middle Class Increases Neglect of Indian Elderly Loss of Respect for Elderly Biggest Concern Rural India With 70 Percent of Indian Total Population Looks After Elders Says Helpage India Study From: news.webindia123.com & Hinduism Today: NEW DELHI, INDIA, May 14, 2006: With the joint family concept is on the decline, a study has shown the dwindling acceptance of the elderly by their families with the overriding concern being lack of respect, regard and love. Even as the fragmentation of the family has been linked to the economic condition, the largest number of nuclear families (67.6 percent) belong to the upper class bracket, says a study by Helpage India. However rural India continues to remain largely unaffected with most (64.5 percent) opting to stay together, though financial security at 92 percent appeared as the biggest factor among rural families. Financial independence and giving advice only when sought are two other factors which largely influence the position occupied by family elders, according to the study that also states that those with means to contribute command a higher standing and connect better with the next generation. 'Help in household chores' and 'tolerance of modern generation' are other factors which influence. Acceptance is taken to be the highest when the aged do not interfere in family matters and respect the independence and space of others at home. From the perspective of the elderly, says the study, the most sought after thing by them is respect and regard from their families. While 90 percent of senior citizens from middle-class families appear to be the most neglected emotionally with lack of respect, regard and affection, 80 percent in the upper income group, 74 percent in the lower class families and 91 percent among rural areas have the same complaint, the study said.   ADHaaARmik Regression of Human Life  In kli-yug kli-yug is the time era stated in vED = SCIENCES OF CREATION AND LIFE has a duration of 432,000 years. kli-yug started after the end of the mHaabhaart war in about 3102 BC on the day SHRii kruSH`AN died killed by an arrow of an hunter. That means humanity is currently in the 5108th year of kli-yug. You can get a overview of the vEDik time concept by clicking here. As per knowledge in 18 puraaANo and 18 up-puraaANo, in kli-yug humanity will have the tendency and socially cultivated inclination not to live by the rules and regulations of vED and DHARm. As kli-yug progresses towards the end of its time duration, humanity will tend to increasingly disobey vED and DHARm due to the focus on commercializing life - "what is in it for me?". This life mNTR comes about with the increasing focus in pursuit of wealth for oneself. And as stated in all the currently available vEDik texts, this disobeying vED and DHARm causes suffering and pain in life on oneself and others. As per the rules of DHARm, elders must be cared for by their progeny in the same way the progeny was nurtured and cared for from birth to attaining self-sufficiency to learn and live life to full. But this is not happening either way. And the reason for it is that in kli-yug due to not living by the rules of DHARm, humanity focuses on creation of wealth for oneself and spending the wealth for oneself. Example: As industrialization in any country increases, there is increasing tendency for both parents to work and leave the raising of their children to others such as day cares, teachers, relatives and sometimes to no body. The children thus increasingly depend on non-parents and especially their peers for growth rather than on their parents or elders who have no time for them. Parents have only very limited daily, weekly, monthly and annual "quality time" for them. Parent's "quality time" with their children is not whatever and whenever time children needs from their parents for growth. Further more, due to industrialization grandparents do not live with or near their children and grandchildren and thus the transmission of wisdom of life from grandparents to their children and grandchildren is practically zero in industrialized communities.   And the result of all of the above change in lifestyle increasing devoid of living by rules of DHARm is the loss of fundamental human relationship which provides the happiness and peace supported by full growth of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects of human progress and prosperity. The above disconnect between parents and their progeny is being documented by many studies in all industrialized countries. Today's news posting in the right column is a prime example of the difference is rural non-industrialized and urban industrialized India. A similar situation evolving in western countries is document in the article on the next page which can be accessed by clicking on the line outside this box...... (The sharing of veDik knowledge in this column is from the vED library of SHRii Champaklal Dajibhai Mistry of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.)

GREY DAYS AHEAD From MACLEANS – Feb 20th, 2006: BY BRIAN BETHUNE: The Age of Old Age is finally upon us, at least in the West. This year the baby boomer bulge marks another milestone on its passage through the belly of the demographic python: the first boomers are turning 60. Everywhere this is being portrayed as an Unfortunate event worthy of a Lemony Snicket novel. Doomsayers wail over a crippling burden of health and pension costs, or simply dread living through the last, crotchety old-folks stage of boomer self-indulgence. About the only grace note ever sounded about the graying of the west is that the boomers- who have managed to enforce their agenda on everyone else at every stage of their lives –will restore a traditional sense of reverence for elders’ wisdom. It’s hard to decide what’s more dubious about that idea: the association of boomers and wisdom or the assumption that there was once a Golden Age when the old were honoured. Historians inspired as always by present-day events to have had a fresh look at the way we were, have been busy investigating the long history of old age. They’ve turned up any number of cold, hard truths, prime among them the fact the Good old days never were; a rude shunting aside of the old and complaints by the elderly about a lack of respect are as old as old age itself. There are now, proportionately, many more old people than ever before. But even in pre-modern Europe, the over 60s were 10 percent of the population. The oft quoted life expectancy numbers were indeed only about 40 to 45 years at birth, but those averages were driven downward by an appalling rate of infant and child mortality. Once an individual came through the dangerous early years of life, she – and even more so he, since warfare was not as constant or as consistently dangerous as child birth – had a good shot at the Biblical three score and 10.   Even in the darkest of dark ages there was always a lucky handful who lived on to their 80s or 90s , especially –just like now – if they were wealthy. Alvise Cornaro, an elderly 16th century Italian nobleman, wrote four treatises on his health regimen, the last when he was 95. Not many shared his happy retirement. Ordinary people couldn’t afford it, although legal codes exempted them from military or jury service after 60 or 70. Even the Church, the most modern of medieval institutions, had little in the way of adequate pensions for parish priests. That made old age a lean time for clerics forced to retire because of infirmity, especially since they had no offspring – at least no legitimate ones to help. Then again, neither did many lay people. The loneliness of old age that we associate with the modern nuclear family was common in the past too. The high infant mortality rate meant that a third of Europe’s elderly had no surviving child on whose financial and emotional support they could count. Not that the childless were necessarily worse off, according to conventional wisdom. Across Europe , folktales warned the elderly about relying on their children. In one popular cautionary tale, an old man keeps his son and daughter – in-law kindly disposed toward him by telling them he still has much of his fortune in reserve, locked in a chest not to be opened before his death. When he does die, the couple force it open, only to find a large club inscribed with "He who gives so much to his children that he must beg, ought to be clubbed until he lies flat.” As late as the 18th century some German cities still had such clubs, and similar warnings, hanging on their gates. Hardly the happy multigenerational family life we imagine we see through our nostalgic fog. Western culture has always had little tolerance for old people who behave in ways the middle aged and young consider unseemly (at least for them). Younger medieval Europeans thought that sex was the constant preoccupation of the elderly, and they didn’t like it one bit. So the one area in which Viagra generation may well force a clear break with the past is in their sex lives. Fitter, healthier and possessing more pharmacological aids than any previous group of pensioners, the boomers are not going to go gentle in to that good night. But they shouldn’t expect anyone else to cheer.

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