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As millions of older Indians are alone, abandoned more by modernity than malice, a Swiss idea based on ‘Time Bank’ rather than money offers a blueprint India urgently needs.

Written by DINESH SOOD | THE NEWS DOSE.COM 

New Delhi / Chandigarh, Updated At: 1.04 PM May 10,2026 IST

A photograph repeats itself across India’s cities and villages. An older man or woman, grey-haired, sits alone on a charpoy or plastic chair, watching the lane outside. Grandchildren in Chandigarh or Cuttack are faces on a phone screen. Hours pass slowly. Nobody comes. This is not a sentimental image but a demographic fact India has only begun to reckon with. It will define the country’s social fabric for the next half-century.

The scale of the crisis

India is greying faster than its institutions can absorb. The 2011 Census counted roughly 104 million people aged 60 and above. By 2026, that number will exceed an estimated 150 million. The United Nations projects India will have over 319 million elderly citizens by 2050, more than the current population of the United States.

The Longitudinal Ageing Study of India (LASI), the most comprehensive survey of its kind, found that about 18–20% of India’s elderly live alone or only with an equally aged spouse. This means between 27 and 30 million older Indians have no consistent younger family member at home. LASI also found that nearly 75% of elderly respondents reported at least one chronic illness, and many had unmet needs for daily assistance such as bathing, cooking, mobility, and companionship.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates depression and anxiety affect 14% of adults over 60, worsened by social isolation. Untreated mental health conditions among the elderly cost India in lost caregiver productivity and higher hospitalisation rates, a hidden fiscal drain no ministry has yet quantified fully.

The causes are structural, not personal. Rural-to-urban migration has fractured joint families that once served as natural care networks. Nuclear households are now the norm. Women, traditionally primary caregivers, are entering the workforce in increasing numbers. Life expectancy at birth has risen to about 70 years, so people live longer, often outliving the support systems they once took for granted.

India’s challenge is not that families have stopped loving their elders. It is that the architecture of care—the joint family, the neighbourhood, the proximity—has been dismantled by the logic of economic growth.

What is being offered, and what it does not

India’s formal response to elderly care has been piecemeal. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, legally obligates children to support parents, but enforcement is weak and emotionally corrosive. The National Programme for Health Care of the Elderly (NPHCE) operates through district hospitals, but rural coverage remains thin.

There is no publicly funded home-care system. No standardised time-credits or community caregiver programmes exist at scale. The burden falls, as always, on whoever is nearby—and increasingly, that person does not exist.

 A Swiss idea whose time has come to India

In Switzerland, a concept called the Time Bank (Zeitvorsorge) emerged from the recognition that monetary pensions alone cannot provide the human elements of care, companionship, dignity, warmth, and presence. The logic is elegant. A healthy individual, say a 70-year-old retired professor, spends a few hours each week helping an 85-year-old neighbour with groceries, cleaning, or conversation. Those hours are logged as credits in a Social Security account. Decades later, when the 70-year-old is frail, she draws on those credits, and the system sends a caregiver to her door.

It is, in essence, a mutual aid network codified into an institution, old wine in a very new bottle, and it works. Swiss surveys report that over 50% of citizens are willing to participate in such programmes. The government has legislated its support. The result is a system that reduces the cost of formal eldercare, distributes the emotional labour of caring more widely across society, and creates social bonds that money alone cannot purchase.

What makes the Time Bank idea especially relevant to India is what India already has in abundance: a large population of relatively younger elderly (aged 55–70) who are healthy, experienced, and underutilised by formal economic structures. LASI data shows many elderly Indians remain physically active well into their late sixties. This is a reservoir of capability that the state currently does nothing to harness.

A concrete path to execute Time Bank efficiently

Here is a concrete path to execute Time Bank efficiently. First, launch a pilot in Chandigarh, Coimbatore, and Indore, cities with large elderly populations, active civil society, and existing NPHCE infrastructure. An account linked to Aadhaar, managed by district administrations, with state and central oversight for portability. Ensure credits cannot be transferred to family members; they must accrue to the individual. Monitor participation by gender quarterly.

Third, allow Time Bank credits to supplement, not replace, the existing old-age pension. The poorest recipients receive both cash and access to care. Pass a Time Bank framework under the Maintenance Act amendment. Allocate seed funding via the National Social Assistance Programme.

Fourth, after three years, publish independent impact data on loneliness, hospitalisation rates, and caregiver well-being. Scale the programme to all states by 2030.

There is also something philosophically consonant about the Time Bank and India’s own traditions. The concept of seva (selfless service) is woven through every major Indian religious and ethical tradition. What the Time Bank does is give seva a ledger: it makes the intangible reciprocal. It says that care given is care banked, that society owes you what you have given to it. That is not a Swiss idea. That is a human one.

-The author is Co-founder and Managing Director of Orane International. Views expressed are personal.