The proposed paper examines the shifting contours and experience of aging and care provision amongst urban Indian older persons residing alone. India is currently witnessing a massive shift in demographic and developmental processes. On the one hand increased life longevity and decreasing fertility rates are resulting in a rising proportion of aging populations. On the other hand, post liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy, transnational migration for work in the service and information technology sector in particular has seen a phenomenal rise. In a country where elderly care was largely embedded in the patriarchal joint family, these developments are complicating family based care arrangements for elderly. Studies have pointed out that in the process of migration, those who ‘stay put’, who are sometimes pejoratively referred to as ‘left behind’, signaling a lack of agency, are also impacted by the movement and mobility of those related to them. This creates a need for world anthropologies to bring the marginal to the center. Situated within this context, this paper illuminates the experiences of aging in absence of care for older persons living alone whose adult children have migrated transnationally and illustrates the shifting understandings of aging as a ‘lethargic experience’, ‘debilitating process’ to ‘an active and engaged phase’. Further, the paper argues that despite the demographic and developmental transformations, the Indian state’s stance on elderly care has largely been that of upholding the family-household unit as the main care-providing institution, thus evading questions of state-sponsored geriatric care facilities, old age pensions and health services. To fill this vacuum, several market-driven mechanisms of elderly care ranging from Antara, Avaza, Emoha, Epoch, Elcare etc. have sprung up in India promising to offer ‘family like care’ or ‘home based care’. However, access to these remains complicated and differentiated by class, gender, spatial locations etc.
