Source: News on Air
Context:
NITI Aayog released a report titled “Reimagining Care: Strategies for Empowering Caregivers in Viksit Bharat@2047.”
Who Are Caregivers
Per the WHO definition adopted in the report, caregivers are individuals who provide physical, emotional and social support to people who cannot independently perform activities of daily living due to age, chronic illness or disability.
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Formal caregivers | Trained professionals — personal care aides, home health aides, geriatric assistants — delivering non-medical or clinical support in homes, hospitals or institutions for remuneration |
| Informal caregivers | Family members, friends or community volunteers providing unpaid, non-formal long-term care |
The Indian Landscape
| Indicator | Figure |
|---|---|
| Elderly population (60+) | 149 million (10.5%) in 2022 → projected 347 million (20.8%) by 2050 |
| Persons with disabilities | Over 26.8 million (2.21%), with 21 benchmark disability categories under the RPwD Act, 2016 |
| Unpaid care time (Time Use Survey) | Women 299 minutes/day against men’s 97 minutes/day |
| Care services market | USD 29.62 billion (2023) → USD 72.31 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 13.76% |
The demographic point: India’s elderly share doubles from about 10% to 21% within a single generation. Countries that aged at this pace — Japan, China — did so at far higher per capita income. India will face a large long-term care burden before it becomes rich enough to fund it institutionally.
Types of Caregivers in India
- Family-based informal caregivers — relatives providing unpaid assistance within households; traditionally the backbone of India’s social fabric.
- Community-based informal caregivers — local volunteers, extended kin and Self-Help Groups, such as Kudumbashree’s K4 Care and Kerala’s Neighbourhood Network in Palliative Care.
- Institutional formal caregivers — trained staff in old-age homes, rehabilitation centres and hospital geriatric wards.
- Home-based and specialised palliative caregivers — paid professionals providing bedside assistance, dementia support and chronic illness management at the patient’s residence.
Global Best Practices
| Country | Practice |
|---|---|
| Japan | Mandatory Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) from 2000; the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) visa to recruit foreign-trained care workers through bilateral G2G frameworks |
| Germany | Mandatory LTCI allowing beneficiaries to choose cash allowances for family carers or in-kind professional care; the Familienpflegezeitgesetz provides up to 24 months of protected care leave |
| China | An eight-level national competency framework; removed mandatory formal education requirements to widen rural workforce entry; pioneered international standards (IEC 63310) for eldercare robots |
Challenges in India
- Fragmented institutional and regulatory framework — no apex statutory body, leading to uncoordinated initiatives across the health, social justice, skill development and labour ministries.
- Lack of standardised curricula and global benchmarks — courses vary widely in duration and quality, with no international alignment or mutual recognition in major destination countries.
- Social unrecognition and absence of safety nets — formal care workers are largely excluded from social security laws such as the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, facing low wages, no health insurance and workplace exploitation.
- Severe caregiver burnout and high turnover — lack of specialised training for neuropsychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia causes emotional exhaustion and high attrition.
- Spatial disruption from migration — rural-to-urban migration of the young leaves elderly parents in villages without traditional informal care networks.
NITI Aayog’s Recommendations
- National Caregiver Council (NCC) — an apex body under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to regulate, accredit and standardise caregiving courses and maintain a National Caregiver Registry.
- National Policy on Caregiving — recognising caregiving as an allied health profession, enforcing fair minimum wages and guaranteeing social security.
- Standardisation under NSQF and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) — aligning qualifications with the National Skills Qualification Framework and using RPL to transition informal family carers into the formal workforce.
- Strategic G2G mobility pathways — leveraging MEA agreements such as the India–Germany Triple Win and India–Israel protocols to train and deploy caregivers with foreign language and cultural competency.
- Family support and respite infrastructure — formal care leave provisions for employees, community respite centres, integration of caregivers with Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, and CSR funding for local care infrastructure.
