Delhi is comparatively safer for elders; Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata mistreat elders: HelpAge survey

New Delhi, Jun 14 (UNI) The national capital of Delhi emerges as the “safer” city for the elderly whereas the cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata and Hyderbad are the “worst” cities for the elderly, according to a survey released by HelpAge India today. According to the HelpAge survey — How India Treat its Elderly, 23 per cent old people in Delhi experienced abuse in the public spaces. This percentage was 52 in Kolkata, 70 in Bengaluru and 60 in Hyderabad. According to the survey, 50 per cent elders face abuse at home but 44 per cent experience abuse in public space and 64 per cent people get away with being rude to the elderly. While releasing the survey, HelpAge CEO Mathew Cherian said, “Elder abuse is a sensitive topic and over the past few years we have been studying and researching elder abuse within the closed doors of one’s home. We have surveyed the elder perspective as well as the youth perspective. This year we decided to move out of the home into the much broader area of Public Space.” HelpAge Country Head, Communications & Advocacy, Manjira Khurana said, “The core of it all is ‘Ageism’, which is discrimination on the basis of Age. Few understand it, but practice it knowingly or unknowingly in their daily lives with elders.” “Simple things like assuming elders can’t understand technology, or being impatient with elders, or pushing an elder in a hurry to get to their destination, or ignoring their utility due to their age, are just some of the things. We are currently running a campaign to ‘Stop Ageism’ and the report will give us a greater insight to its practice in society,” she said. Highlighting the misconception of society, BBC National Creative Director & Executive Producer Radharani Mitra said, “We live in a lie. As a society we do not even recognise the fact that we are not elder responsible society.” She said, the thing which disturb me is that the most don’t really look after our elder well. Elder and younger people are standing on two different poles, Apathy and Empathy. Our society are getting more focused on double income family construct and the people who look after elder their life is getting more and more pressurised. The need of the hour is to really look at how can social behaviour change and in order to do that we have to look at the factor which are leading us to apathy and empathy issue.” The survey was conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata (WB), Mumbai (Maharashtra), Chennai (TN), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Bangalore (Karnataka), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Guwahati (Assam), Hyderabad (Telangana & AP), Lucknow (UP) and Shillong (Meghalaya). UNI