Bhopal: Clearing the air over the speculations of restoration of concessions on senior citizens in train tickets, the Indian railways has explicitly dismissed the prospect of restoring it. Before COVID, women passengers above the age of 58 were eligible for a 50% fare rebate, while men above 60 were eligible for a 40% discount. This applies to all trains, except Garib Rath and a few other trains like the Gatiman Express, Suvidha, and Humsafar trains.

In a reply filed by Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch-based RTI activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur to CRIS (Central railways Information Systems) seeking the status of the recommendations made by the Parliamentary standing committee on railwayss over the restoration of concessions on senior citizens in train tickets, the railways said, “After duly considering the recommendations of the standing committee, the railways has reached to the conclusions that it gave a subsidy of Rs 59,837 crore in 2019-20 on all the passenger tickets which are 53% of total the ticket’s fair. Besides, the concession for disabled, patients and students are already in play.”

The Ministry of railways, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on March 19, 2020, issued a circular withdrawing all the concessions given on train tickets for various categories, including senior citizens (except four categories of Divyangjan, 11 categories of patients and students). This was done to prevent non-essential travelling during COVID-19.

Before COVID, women passengers above the age of 58 were eligible for a 50% fare rebate, while men above 60 were eligible for a 40% discount. This applies to all trains, except Garib Rath and a few other trains like the Gatiman Express, Suvidha, and Humsafar trains.

When the railways did not restore the concession after months of the COVID-19 restrictions eased off, questions were raised in the parliament. Replying to it, the Union railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Monsoon session of the parliament in 2022, said, “Re-starting concessions for senior citizens were not feasible for the government.”

But after the Parliamentary standing committee on railwayss submitted its report on August 4, 2022, in favour of the restoration of senior citizens’ concession for sleeper and 3AC passengers, hopes have gone up that the railwayss might restore the concessions.

The committee recommended that since the railwayss are heading towards normalcy, they should consider the concessions granted to different categories of passengers judiciously.

“The Committee desires that concessions to senior citizens which were available in pre-COVID times may be reviewed and considered at least in Sleeper Class and III AC urgently so that the vulnerable and the genuinely needy senior citizens could avail the facility in these classes,” the report read.

But, the RTI reply clarifies that the railwayss has no plan to restore the concessions.

To justify their decision, the railways termed the concession to senior citizens as a ‘loss of revenue’. It argued that the railways have been losing an average of Rs 1,800 crore yearly due to concession on passenger tickets which dropped to Rs 38 crore in 2020-21 — the year concessions were dropped.

Subsidy for Senior Citizens 2016-17 to 2020-21

Nevertheless, the railways, in an RTI reply, admitted that over 65% of the senior citizens travelling between 2015 to 2018 either opted for sleeper classes or non-AC coaches.

The railways said, “Between 2015 to 2018, 54% of senior citizens preferred sleeper class, 16 % opted for 3-AC, 7% of passengers opted for Chair Car, an additional 7% travelled in 2-AC, 2% in other AC classes while the remaining 14% travelled in other non-AC coaches.

Classification of passengers travelled between 2015-2018

The data indicates that the senior citizens benefiting from the concessions belong to the middle or marginalised classes.

After dropping senior citizen concessions, the RTI further sought the details of the railways’ earnings. The railways said between April 2020 and September 2022, it earned Rs 5808.85 crore by selling 11.3 crore tickets to senior citizens, including 6. 8 crore men and 4.54 crore.

The railways earned Rs 3,434 crore from males and Rs 2,373 crore from female passengers. By dropping senior citizen concessions, railways saved close to Rs 1,300 crore from male and Rs 1,200 crore from female senior citizens.

According to Gaur’s RTI, the number of aged passengers, which dropped during the COVID times, is restabilising to pre-pandemic levels. In Financial Year 2019-20, Indian railways carried 7.3 crore elderly persons, dropping to 1.90 crore in FY 20-21. However, it climbed to 5.5 crore in FY22, and in the ongoing financial year till September end, it reached 3.87 crore.

Showing displeasure over the railways’s decision, a member of the Bhopal Citizen Forum, Harish Bhavnani, pointed out, “It’s not joyful to see that railways dropped an essential welfare scheme for senior citizens and termed it as ‘loss of the revenue’. India is a welfare state, and when politicians and government officials can get concessions, why can’t the senior citizens?”

“Instead of discontinuing it, the railways should raise the age bar from 60 to 65 for men and 58 to 60 for women. It may cut down the losses,” he suggested.

SK Gaur, a member of the Bhopal-based senior citizen forum, further said that senior citizens are an unorganised sector, where just a small proportion of people have pensions or earnings.

“Besides, inflation is skyrocketing, and there is hardly any direct government policy for middle-class senior citizens. In that case, discontinuing such a popular scheme is against the aged people.”

Apart from concessions, in reply to the question in the ongoing parliament sessions, the Indian railways have brushed aside the speculation over resuming the stoppage of trains in the railway stations as it was in pre-COVID-19 times.

NO STOPPAGE OF TRAINS

Replying to the question of BJP MP from Khajuraho VD Sharma and Rakesh Singh, a parliamentarian from Jabalpur, the railways said that it has scientifically redesigned the timetable after the COVID and stoppages at these stations are neither operationally expedient nor commercially justified at present.

railways said, “To provide better passenger safety by creating maintenance corridor blocks, minimising conflicts in existing time tables etc., Indian railways had undertaken rationalisation of time tables (including that of stoppages) in a scientific manner with the assistance of IIT-Bombay. Since November 2021, Mail/Express services have been operated as per rationalised timetable and stoppages. However, provision of stoppage is an ongoing process on Indian railways subject to operational feasibility, commercial justification, etc.”

Courtesy: Newsclick

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The most important support needed by elderly persons is for regular and adequate pensions. Only about 10 per cent of senior citizens in India have access to regular and reasonable pensions. They are mostly those who have served in the civil government, armed forces and related parts of the formal sector. For the remaining over 90 per cent of senior citizens, pensions either do not exist, or else are irregular, uncertain or extremely inadequate.

The pensions for this unorganized sector are provided mainly by the National Social Assistance Program or NSAP (and to a lesser extent by some other programs). Out of the nearly 82 million elderly citizens in this informal sector, this scheme of the Union Government manages to reach just about 22 million people. Many eligible and selected  persons have been denied pension due to insistence on Aadhar and biometric recognition, various irregularities and other factors. Thus around 60 million elderly people are still waiting to get any pension. There are separate pension schemes for widows under NSAP.

This scheme of the Union Government distinguishes between two age groups of elderly citizens—60 to 79 years and 80 years onwards. In the second age-group the Union government provides Rs. 500 per month per person. However the overwhelming majority of the elderly people are in the former age-group. For this age group the contribution of the Union government is just Rs. 200 per month.

At a time when  highly dubious projects worth tens of thousands of crores have been cleared without much thought and huge income raises are provided to senior officials and politicians as a routine matter, when the number of billionaires in the country is higher than ever before, the pension offered to most elderly citizens who toiled from morning to night as farmers and workers for at least four decades by the union government is just Rs. 200 per month.

This was fixed about a decade back and has not been changed since then despite many demands, protests and recommendations to increase this. During this period the value of this amount in present day prices has dwindled to just about Rs. 85 or so.

To this amount provided by the union government the state government generally adds a contribution of its own under this scheme. In some of the smaller states like Goa, Kerala and Delhi the state governments for a long time have been making a significant contribution so that the selected elderly citizens (not all elderly citizens) in these few states are able to get a higher pension than in most other states, but this is available to only a few compared to the national level numbers.

In several states with much higher population of elderly citizens the contribution of the state government is also very small. For example in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar the pension under this scheme even after adding the state contribution is extremely less.

So on the one hand about 60 million elderly people are not getting any pension and on the other hand most of them who manage to get a pension get a very meager amount. Even these pensions often do not reach them in time and many of these elderly persons have to spend a lot of effort and often some money to obtain their pension.

Their problems increased significantly after the introduction of Aadhar and biometrics based identification. The system of grievance removal which exists today leaves much to be desired and it is difficult for elderly people to get prompt action on their complaints. Pensions of several elderly persons are sometimes stopped arbitrarily and they keep running from pillar to post to renew them.

A justice-based solution, which is workable within existing  fiscal constraints,  is to provide at least one half of the minimum legal wage to all senior citizens. This should be unconditional for all except those in a very high wealth and income slab, without the recipient contributing to this. Those who are getting higher pensions under various provisions will continue to do so.

In practical terms what this means is that if the legal minimum wage is Rs. 300 per day, then an elderly person will get a pension of Rs. 4500 per month, and a couple will get Rs. 9000.

This objective can be achieved if the Indira Gandhi National Social Assistance Program can get an allocation of around 1.80 per cent of GNP (compared to about 0.03 per cent which it gets today). Considering that allocations for this program have not been raised for a long time, this demand should get priority attention.

Bharat Dogra is Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include A Day in 2071 and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org

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“Kab se pension nahin aa raha hai (I can’t remember how long I haven’t been paid a pension),” said Jamaal, who migrated here from Bihar’s Supaul district decades ago in search of a livelihood.

The pension could have also allowed Ram Pyari, a frail widow who lives in a hut in north Delhi’s GTB Nagar area, to be independent of her two daughters, both domestic workers. On record, Ram Pyari is 64, but she is clearly a lot older–the year of her birth has been wrongly entered in her Aadhaar card, she said–and age restricts her movement.

The pension was not much, but it kept Ram Pyari from starving. “Koi sona-chandi to nahin banaya, sirf pet aur roti ka kaam chalta tha (the pension wasn’t enough to buy gold or silver but it took care of the hunger),” she said.

Kamru Jamaal and Ram Pyari are among nearly 200,000 impoverished senior citizens of Delhi who lost their pension in 2013, a year after Delhi’s municipal corporation was trifurcated into north, south and east districts. The administrative split had depleted the corporation’s resources, and there were no funds to pay poor elderly citizens, the newly created corporations headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reasoned.

There are currently 1.14 million elderly persons in Delhi. The stipend used to be paid to anyone above 60 years of age with no support or income, and whose annual income from all sources was less than Rs 48,000. These applicants also could not benefit from other government pension schemes, such as the one run by the Delhi state government.

In 2016, in response to a petition, the Delhi High Court had asked the Delhi government to deal with the crisis caused by the corporations’ decision. But only a small number of former corporation beneficiaries, roughly 8-11% as we explain later, are being paid under the Delhi government’s Old Age Assistance scheme.

Why are payments held up?
The problem lies with the political hostilities between the BJP, which heads the corporations, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that currently heads the Delhi government, said municipal and state government officials who did not wish to be named because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

Our investigations also found that the process of verifying the ex-corporation beneficiaries is caught in a web of official apathy and red tape.

The Delhi government’s pension amounts are among the highest in India. In 2017, the amount was revised to Rs 2,000 per month to those eligible and between 60-69 years of age, and Rs 2,500 to those above 70 (an additional Rs 500 is paid per month to beneficiaries from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes). Delhi also has a pension programme for widows and the disabled.

The national average for pensions to destitute senior citizens is around Rs 889, according to a 2018 report of Helpage India, a nonprofit organisation. Like Delhi, Kerala, Goa, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands also pay Rs 2,000 as pension.

To this payment made from state government funds, the central government contributes Rs 200 per beneficiary under the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme. This pension applies to destitute beneficiaries from below-poverty-line households and above 60 years and has not been revised since 2006-07, though the Centre did raise the amount for those above 80 years to Rs 500.

These pensions are not adequate for survival, forcing many elderly people to continue working as long as they can, IndiaSpend reported in April 2017.

Old-age pensions are seen as a senior citizen’s right, a payback for economic contributions made through their working lives, to be paid at a time when earning capacity has declined due to age or poor health, according to experts.

They honour unpaid contribution of senior citizens to families and to society, roles that are even truer among Indian joint families and close-knit rural communities, and help to reduce the economic dependence of the elderly on their families.

In India, where the share of the elderly in the population is increasing at a faster rate than before, as the 2017 India Ageing Report by the United Nations Population Fund showed, experts consider government support essential.

Currently, the elderly (aged 60+) comprise 6.8% of Delhi’s population and 8.6% of India’s, according to a 2016 ministry of statistics report. India’s share of population over the age of 60 is projected to more than double between 2015 and 2050–from 8% to 19%–the report said.

By the end of the century, the elderly will constitute nearly 34% of the country’s population, the report added. This makes it important for support programmes, such as the one run by the Delhi government, to ensure that senior citizens are allowed to retire in comfort and dignity.

Kamlesh looking for her pension card outside her house in Delhi’s Shastri Mohalla. Kamlesh’s husband died two decades ago and the Rs 1,000 monthly pension from EDMC was her family’s primary income.

‘My body is not capable of labour’
Senior citizen Kamlesh (who uses only one name) lives with her middle-aged son, who has a general learning disability, in east Delhi’s Shastri Mohalla. The Rs 1,000 monthly pension from the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) was the family’s primary income. When Kamlesh’s husband died two decades ago, she started doing domestic work but cannot handle it any longer.

“My body cannot manage the labour,” she said.

Kamlesh stepped out of her darkened home–a few steps below street level–to squint at her pension card: The last entry was on October 31, 2013. This was followed by a payment of Rs 4,999 into her bank account on July 5, 2014, which was not entered in her pension card, she said.

“My electricity connection was suspended for a year because I could not pay the bill after the pension stopped coming,” she told IndiaSpend. The area’s social workers have since pleaded with the authorities to reconnect her power supply.

The last entry in Kamlesh’s pension card was made on October 31, 2013

In December 2014, Ashok Agarwal, an advocate who runs Social Jurist, a civil rights group, along with social activist Sunita Chauhan, stumbled upon Kamlesh’s situation. “I was aghast at the sub-human conditions that the elderly were living in, in the absence of pensions,” he said.

Agarwal filed a writ petition before the Delhi High Court and in April 2015, the court criticised the EDMC for not paying pensions to most of the 30,816 beneficiaries under its Old Age Pension Scheme for 24 months from March 2013. It had also denied pensions to nearly 14,000 widows or disabled persons.

Subsequently, the high court found that between 2013 and 2014, the Delhi municipal corporation’s north and south arms had also stopped paying old-age pensions. About 184,000 beneficiaries–30,816 in EDMC, 72,856 in south DMC and about 80,000 in north DMC – had been deprived of payments, the court found.

Passing the buck
Until 2013, Delhi had three municipal corporations–the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, and the Delhi Cantonment Board. Since the trifurcation of the Delhi municipal corporation in 2013, Delhi has five municipal corporations, of which three–north, east and south–have stopped paying pensions, as we mentioned earlier. At the time, and currently too, all three corporations are held by the BJP. The Delhi government, during this time, has been led by the AAP.

The pensions ended after the trifurcation of the MCD, as we said, executed by the then Congress-led state government. The corporations in their reply to the high court said this trifurcation had led to financial shortfalls. The corporations also claimed that the Delhi government had cut down its budgetary grant to the corporations by 16% from Rs 1,881.3 crore to Rs 1581.1 crore between 2013 and 2015, further reducing its resources.

Despite the cuts, each corporation continued providing perks and allowances to its mayors and high-ranking officials, pointed out an official in the north corporation who did not wish to be named. The Delhi government has, in turn, accused the corporations of financial mismanagement and under-recovery of taxes.

The Delhi government’s share in central taxes has remained the same since 2001-2002, despite a 500% increase in its budget during the same time, as per an India Today report. From the 2019-20 interim budget, Delhi government had reportedly asked for Rs 1,000 crore for local bodies, but no such allocation was made.

In 2016, the high court directed the corporations to provide their lists of pension beneficiaries to the state government within four weeks. These beneficiaries would be absorbed by the state government’s department of social welfare (DSW) in the old age assistance scheme (popularly known as old-age pension) under its financial assistance schemes (FAS).

The corporations did not comply and Social Jurist filed a contempt petition in March 2016. When the lists were finally provided, the DSW termed them unreliable, saying “the information is mostly in casual form”.

The number of poor and elderly citizens the Delhi government can support with a pension was capped at 530,000 in 2016. The earlier limit was 430,000 and the state was already paying 384,585 when the high court ordered the addition of 184,00 ex-corporation beneficiaries. The Delhi government then increased the upper cap by 100,000. The state cannot turn down pension applications from widows and the disabled–their applications have to be processed on a rolling basis and are not subject to any cap.

No more than 8-11% of former beneficiaries being paid
In December 2016, the Delhi High Court laid out the process of pension take-over by the state government: corporations would hold camps in their wards along with the DSW to verify former beneficiaries. This process was to be completed within six months or by June 2017. But the camps were held till as late as September 2018.

“I was frustrated by the pace of the case and decided to drop it,” said Agarwal. The contempt case was closed in April 2018.

By the third quarter of 2017, only 8,454 ex-corporation beneficiaries were being paid by the DSW.

What are the numbers today?

“They might be around 15,000-20,000, but it is an approximate figure,” said Rajeev Saksena, deputy director of FAS, in February 2019.
“Actually, this process is under process,” welfare officer Rahul Dixit interjected. “Until it’s complete, we can’t say anything.”

A figure of 15,000-20,000 accounts for 8-11% of those waiting to be paid.

In March 2019, the DSW was paying 442,838 old-age beneficiaries, compared to 384,585 in 2016, indicating that fewer than 60,000 beneficiaries were added in three years. This figure would also include new and previously never-enrolled pensioners (and adjust for beneficiaries who died).

In this process of verifying and enrolling ex-corporation beneficiaries, a demographic that would have limited mobility and resources was asked to physically appear or be denied the allowance.

Old-age pension applications are not included in the nearly 70 services covered by Delhi’s doorstep delivery services available for a fee of Rs 50. Over the past five months, disability and widow pension applications have also been excluded from doorstep delivery, an operator informed IndiaSpend.

‘Online mein loot machi hai’

On a rainy February 2019 morning, a group of 14 elderly women and men from Sadar assembly constituency, accompanied by social activists and senior citizens Hawa Singh and Murari Lal, complained to Rajendra Pal Gautam, Delhi’s minister for social welfare.

The most common complaint was that none of them were listed on the pension rolls though they had submitted applications in December 2018 to the local MLA, Somdutt Sharma. “New applications are closed because we don’t have the budget,” said Vishal Verma, the minister’s officer on special duty, as they waited at his residence-cum-office in Civil Lines. “Anyway the model code of conduct will start soon, so we’ll open after [general] elections.”

The MLA arrived an hour later. “Old age pension unlimited nahin hai, yeh samajh lo (understand that old-age pension ((quota)) is not unlimited),” he said. Hawa Singh (HS) requested online applications to be opened but the minister (RPG) argued it was not feasible for the staff to filter out bona fide claims given the size of the quota. Here is how the conversation unfolded:

HS: Online karr lijiye (make it online).

RPG: Online mein loot machi hai (There’s a loot online).

HS: Check karo kaun entitled hain kaun nahin (Check who’s entitled and who isn’t).

RPG: Kaun check karega itne, 5.3 lakh ka quota hai. Jo pehle aayega, use milega. Jo baad mein aayega, woh waiting mein jaayega (Who will check 5.3 lakh applications. We’ll work on first-come-first-served basis).

Caught in red tape
When IndiaSpend visited the District Social Welfare Office (DSWO, north) in Gulabi Bagh, one of the verification centres, in March 2019, the staff shortage was evident: There were three data-entry operators and a welfare officer, all on contract. The superintendent’s post was vacant. Indu Sehrawat, the welfare officer, was struggling with poor internet speed.

The application modes have also been changing often: Before 2017, applications were made by hard copy at the office of district social welfare officers; in February-March 2017, the process went online and could be completed via the Delhi government’s e-district portal. The rules changed again for the 2018 November-December cycle: online applications could be made only through an MLA, and each MLA could handle 500.

A December 2018 writ petition filed in the Delhi High Court by Aya Nagar municipal councillor Ved Pal against the stoppage of multi-point online applications has reopened the path for online applications. As of May 2019, no processing of applications was being done because of general elections, Sehrawat told IndiaSpend.

“MLAs pass on information (about processing of applications) and we also relay it through newspapers,” said P Ananda Rao, who is the District Social Welfare Officer at the District Office (north).

Leela Devi, 65, a domestic worker, and her husband Vijay Pal, 60, a cobbler, have no access to this information. Vijay Pal’s health is declining and Leela’s earnings simply cannot cover the mounting health bills anymore; and then there is the Rs 2,000 to be paid for their shanty in north Delhi’s Indira Vikas Colony.

“We never find out when the applications open and whom to approach,” said Leela. For now, the couple are headed to Uttar Pradesh, where they will live with relatives. “If we get our pensions, only then can we return to Delhi,” she added.

(Nagpal is an independent multimedia journalist based in New Delhi.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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