Post-retirement life for majority in India an uphill ride

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In India, there’s a crazy fascination for government jobs. Only in this country you can find a techie working in a top IT firm and getting a fat salary sitting for a written exam for a much lower paying central government job.

You might be thinking it is about serving the country. It may be, partly, but it is more about the pension.

The usual joke among senior citizens is that government employees are the ones who enjoy longevity due to the pension amount they get.

But it is not only private sector employees who are feeling the brunt of low FD rates and rising prices of essentials.

In WhatsApp groups, there are many messages floating around which highlight the fragile financial condition of many retired PSU employees. Unfortunately, many, whose stints have lasted more than 25 years in these PSU firms, are left to rue the fact that they should have looked for greener pastures.

Not that their private sector peers are in any better position.

Majority of them are dependent on interest generated from their savings, the current environment has become very challenging for them. With hardly any joint families now, apart from battling financial insecurity, senior citizens also have to deal with loneliness and the perennial fear of falling sick.

By 2026, senior citizens will comprise around 12.5% of the total population and are expected to surpass 19.5% by 2050.

With majority of professionals employed in the private sector and PSUs, the thought of inadequate financial security at the fag end of life can be very unnerving.

Although the new Wage Code seeks to address this partially by bumping up the retirement corpus, it is not the ideal answer.

A senior colleague had once joked that if someone is working in a government job today, it means he must have had done some good deeds in his previous birth. Don’t know whether to believe it or not but it is understandable why there is such a clamour for government jobs in this country.

Post-retirement life is meant to be spent without any hardships or worries. Alas in India, it seems that stage is going to remain a distant dream for many.