Aging, housing markets and social inclusion: Insights from India

In this piece, I draw attention on how the booming real estate market in India is patterned around the axes of social inequality. Specifically, it argues that in a socio-economic context of depressed later life incomes with declining familial support, a singular focus on (upper) middle class niche senior living market is both exclusionary and misguided. The empirical basis for this argument comes from a range of press coverage on the inviting market for seniors as well as the recently released Government of India report (Model Guidelines for Development and Regulation of Retirement Homes, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, 2019) on the regulatory framework for privately managed 'retirement homes' for the 'urban upper and middle income elderly'. I ask if the Report with its orchestration of an upper middleclass lifestyle and aesthetic governmentality is a deliberate neglect of the economic precariousness of a vast majority of lower-income households that lie at the margins of the urban-focused neoliberal State. I reflect what this erasure holds for questions of equity and social justice under neoliberalism and conclude on the intellectual possibilities of environmental gerontology by privileging the anthropological dimensions of housing and property regimes.