India’s Elderly Sue for Assisted Suicide

Four old men are demanding that assisted suicide be legalized in India, and their lawyer’s office is flooded with letters from hundreds of other senior citizens who agree.

There is little expectation that the lawsuits will overturn India’s ban on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicides, but attorney Vincent Panikulangara says the case underlines the problems of old people in this crowded, poor nation.

Experts say the elderly are increasingly neglected and isolated, particularly in the southern state of Kerala, where the right-to-die suits began.

By 2020, India will have 145 million people 60 or older, says the British-based HelpAge International, an aid group that has a wide network in India.

The issue is most acute in Kerala, a state of 30 million people where the success of primary health programs has meant that people live far longer than elsewhere in India.

Life expectancy for all of India averages 59 years, but in Kerala the average is 70. Almost 7% of India’s citizens are elderly--65 million in a population of nearly 1 billion--while 20% of Kerala’s people are elderly.

With so many elderly, workers in Kerala are pushed out of their jobs earlier to make room for youth. Employees in Kerala retire at 55, compared to 62 in most other states. In addition, a high percentage of younger Keralites work abroad, leaving their parents alone and uncared for.

That is part of the reason Kerala is India’s suicide hub: Every hour, on average, one person commits suicide and nine people try to do so, the state government says. Nearly 9,000 suicides were recorded in 1997.

“Old people are discarded by their descendants. Their property is grabbed by their relatives. . . . I see this all around me,” said 69-year-old Mukundan Pillai, a retired teacher who is one of the men who has gone to court seeking the right to die when they choose, with dignity.

Pillai is healthy and mentally alert and his grown sons live close by. He has no immediate plans to die, but he says he must plan for a possible lonely future.

In a country where people rarely talk about death, Pillai shocked his family when he declared that he was filing his assisted-suicide petition.

“They thought I was going to kill myself a day later or something,” he said, tending flowers in his large house on a plot of land dotted with coconut trees and rows of plants. “They needed a lot of convincing. . . . I feel they have not come up to my level of thinking as yet.”

Pillai, who lives in Kollam, a small trading town 1,350 miles south of New Delhi, said the lack of help for the elderly is at the root of his suit.

“Either the government should help them live, or it should help them die,” he said.

There are few government programs in India that especially target old people. The federal minister for social justice, Maneka Gandhi, announced plans in January to develop a national program to provide senior citizens with pensions, health insurance, housing and other help.

But it could take years for the idea to be discussed and enacted into law. And many people question whether India can afford such programs.

For now, only 2.8 million Indians are covered by old age pension plans. There is no legal requirement for businesses to provide pensions for their employees.