Deblina Dey

DEBLINA DEY, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India, was awarded a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship in September 2023 to assist research and writing on “Ageing, Law, and the Politics of Care in India.” This manuscript explores the sources of distress among older people from different social backgrounds and the changing landscape of eldercare in urban India. The author has used qualitative research methods of multi-sited ethnography, interviews, and focus group discussions and has analyzed maintenance laws, court judgments, mediation orders and complaint letters written by older people. The law, the market, and other philanthropic institutions provide different services and routes to tackle distress arising from abuse, neglect and loneliness faced by older people, in most cases, due to dysfunctional familial relationships or the physical absence of familial caregivers. Each model of eldercare explored in the book — the juridical, commodified, institutional, and medical models — elucidates the vulnerabilities of ageing, including the struggles against obsolescence and the challenges of caregiving faced by caregivers in contemporary neo-liberal and rights-conscious Indian society.