Support to the elderly is fraying in India. But no one appears prepared for this – not families, not companies, not the government.
At traffic intersections, drivers in Delhi tune out the brown-haired, snot-nosed waifs who tap and scratch insistently at their car windows. Sometimes, the children are joined by equally ragged parents, mostly in their 20s, trying to sell cheap Chinese-made junk – from plastic flowers to cellphone and steering-wheel covers. The defining feature of destitution in North India appears to be youth.