Doctoral Thesis Submitted To
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Doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Behavioural and Cultural Studies Heidelberg University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) in Anthropology Title of the thesis Old Age – Home? Middle-Class Senior Citizens and New Elderscapes in Urban India presented by Annika Mayer year of submission 2017 Dean: Prof. Dr. Birgit Spinath Advisor: Prof. Dr. Christiane Brosius TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Theoretical Frameworks ....................................................................................... 6 1.2. Care Arrangements and Intergenerational Transformations ............................... 13 1.3. Locating Urban Senior Citizens .......................................................................... 20 1.4. Research Context and Design ............................................................................. 25 1.5. The Outline ......................................................................................................... 32 AGEING IN THE CITY SENIOR CITIZENS IN THE NEW CAPITAL REGION OF DELHI .......................... 35 2.1. The Formation of Middle-Class Enclaves .......................................................... 38 2.2. Ageing in a South Delhi Neighbourhood ........................................................... 51 2.3. Gateways of Ageing ........................................................................................... 64 2.4. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 80 FAMILY MATTERS FAMILY, MIGRATION, AND INTERGENERATIONAL TIES ................................ 83 3.1. “A Joint Family Is More Than Living Together” – Doing Family ..................... 86 3.2. Transnational Families and Mobile Elderly ..................................................... 120 3.3. Reprise: Family Matters ................................................................................... 132 OLD AGE – HOME? ETHNOGRAPHIC INSIGHTS INTO A CARE INSTITUTION ................................ 135 4.1. Turning Space Into Place .................................................................................. 139 4.2. Becoming at Home? ......................................................................................... 151 4.3. Ways of Operating: Caste, Class, Habits, and Power Within an Institution ..................................... 168 4.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 176 i TIME AND THE LIFE COURSE SPENDING TIME MEANINGFULLY ....................................................................... 179 5.1. Time and the Life Course ................................................................................. 180 5.2. ‘Active Ageing’ with the Yoga Family ............................................................ 188 5.3. What Will Other People Say? Disciplined ‘Senior Citizens’ ........................... 193 5.4. Engagement and Timepass: The Shaping of the Self and the World at Old Age .......................................... 197 5.5. Loneliness, Death and Dying ............................................................................ 203 5.6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 208 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 211 APPENDIX .................................................................................................................. 223 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 224 Table of Figures ........................................................................................................ 241 Notes on Transliteration and Translation .................................................................. 242 List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................ 242 ii Acknowledgements Any dissertation is a joint effort in a number of ways. Critical thinking is not achieved without input from others. I sincerely thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Christiane Brosius for her continuous input and encouragement which helped me to rethink my concepts and to strengthen my argument. Without her guidance, this thesis would not have come as far. Furthermore, I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Frank Heidemann for his advice and comments. I thank my colleagues at the cluster, particularly Roberta Mandoki, Marlène Harles, and Lucie Bernroider, for important discussions, constructive suggestions, and their company during this challenging endeavour. The comments of Sarah Lamb, Bianca Brijnath, and of other participants in the workshop “New Approaches to Ageing in South Asia and Europe” in Delhi, 2015, were most valuable for developing and strengthening ideas and analysis. I am thankful to Roma Chatterji, Lawrence Cohen, Arunava Dasgupta, Andreas Kruse, Rajni Palriwala, Tulsi Patel, Ira Raja, Nadja-Christina Schneider, Sanjay Srivastava, and Harm-Peer Zimmermann for their beneficial advice. Research requires assistance of many kinds. This project would not be the same without the participation, help and support of numerous people. My sincere thanks go to all my informants who were willing to share their knowledge and to spend time with me. Without their trust I could not have got insights in many very personal stories which provided me with rich fieldwork material. Heartfelt thanks go to Lokesh, Saurabh Kocher, and Sambhav Sharma, for their important assistance during my fieldwork as well as to Prerana Dhakhwa and Subin Hachhethu for their translations of interviews from Hindi into English. I especially thank Tulsi Patel for her kind support in overcoming administrative challenges. Anne-Christin Werkshage and Julian Tsapir were indispensable when it came to literary research and the digitalisation of fieldwork material. And last but not least I thank Jakob Gross and Roberta Mandoki for their “first class” collaboration during the implementation of our transmedia project “Elderscapes. Ageing in Urban South Asia.” It was an immense amount of work but a lot of fun as well. Writing is not a sole endeavour. Deep gratitude goes to my parents Annette and Ernst Mayer who spent weekends and nights to proofread my thesis. Their untiring help encouraged me to keep writing, rephrasing, and revising. Thank you! iii And lastly, no man is an island, entire of itself. I thank Oda for her hospitality in Heidelberg and the stimulating conversations we had. I am grateful to my grandmother Rose who supported me with contacts to family members in India. Heartfelt thanks go to Tine and Katharina who cared for me during fieldwork. I sincerely thank my dear friends who supported me during this phase in life which was at times very challenging, especially Miriam, Felix, Anne, Teresa, Jasmine, and Janine. Thank you all. This work was made possible through the financial support of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University, Germany, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Figure 1.1: Axis Bank Advertisement at a South Delhi Upscale Market. Photo: Annika Mayer 1 The senior living sector in India is at a crossroad. With the relaxation of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) restrictions on investments in the sector and [an] increasing population of seniors (over 100 million seniors in India at present) to cater to, there clearly exists an untapped opportunity for investment and development in this sector. Unlike western countries where the senior living industry has gained maturity, India provides an opportunity to developers, service providers, healthcare players and operators to create solutions specific to India while leveraging learning from across the world. (M. Kumar and Gattani 2015) This passage taken from a report of the global real estate consultant company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) evokes the image of India as the land of untapped opportunities for development in the senior market. Considering the changing dynamics of Indian society and demographics, investment in the senior market seems to be a promising business opportunity. Indeed, we currently witness the emergence of a variety of private elder care services for the well-off in India. Institutionalised elder care hardly existed twenty years ago except for few facilities provided for the destitute. The proliferation of middle-class old-age homes started in the mid- 1990s (Lamb 2009, 4) and since the beginning of the new millennium retirement communities for an affluent clientele have come up, now mushrooming all over India, particularly in the vicinity of large metropolises. Many Indians regard the emergence of market-based elder care as representation of profound societal changes which accompany the country’s economic liberalisation. The transformations are considered to include not only an increasingly scattered family life but also a shift in values to individualism and materialism. In his research during the 1980s and early 1990s anthropologist Lawrence Cohen found that gerontological work as well as middle-class discourses