Enjoy Retirement Today

For most of human history, societies worried about having enough young people to work, produce and support families. A different demographic reality is now emerging. People are living longer, birth rates are falling in many countries, and the number of senior citizens is rising rapidly. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were about 1.2 billion people aged 60 and above globally in 2023. This number is projected to reach 2.1 billion by 2050, when roughly one in five people worldwide will be 60 or older. India is moving in the same direction. The UNFPA India Ageing Report 2023 projects that the country's elderly population could exceed 20 per cent of the total population by 2050. By 2046, the number of elderly people may even surpass the population of children aged up to 15 years. India has 153 million people aged 60 plus. By 2050 that number is likely to reach 347 million, around 20 per cent of the population.   Living longer is an achievement of modern civil...

My father retired from the Indian Army as a Major in 1985. He received four years of re-employment and finally retired in 1989 at the age of 56. His monthly pension was Rs. 950, and his lifetime savings from service amounted to Rs. 1.5 lakh. At that time, there was a re-employment cell in Delhi to help retired Army personnel find civilian jobs. My father lived for another 30 years and passed away in 2019. During those three decades, he never received even a 15-paisa postcard from that office. After retirement, our family settled in a small house in Mohali. The town was developing rapidly, with companies such as Ranbaxy and several factories operating there. Many of them recruited retired Army officers as Security Officers. My father visited numerous organisations seeking employment. Almost every employer gave him the same answer. They preferred Short Service Commission officers who retired in their thirties because they could serve the company for another 20 years. At the age of 56...