COVID-19 worst-hit population gets no relief from Budget 2022

The senior citizens of the country who were the most affected by the pandemic are disappointed with the government's union budget for 2022, as there were no specific funds allocated for them.

Sailesh Mishra, Founder, of The Silver Innings Foundation, which cares for the elderly, said, “This year's budget was very disappointing, every year we expect something from the government but especially this year the expectations were higher because the last three years were so rough because of covid-19. The age group of 60 and above were more hit during covid-19 comparative to the rest of the population, so there were a lot of health costs, most of them did not have a mediclaim to fund their hospital expenses because mostly after a certain age people don't get mediclaim. We were expecting that there would be some tax deduction or relief for senior citizens who have had heavy medical bills due to covid. There is also a GST of 18% on all the eldercare services, which becomes difficult for this segment of society to pay, we thought the government will either withdraw or at least reduce it.”

Mishra also said, “This budget is not for senior citizens at all, they have just ignored and neglected this population of society who can't voice out and come on the streets to protest against the government. In our country the population rate of senior citizens is growing, there are around 138 million senior citizens, out of which 71 million are women and 67 million are men. So naturally, were we expecting allocation of funds for us in this budget to the department of social welfare for the entire country, but there was no mention of this which was very sad.”

He also spoke about the interest rates going down every day which leads to limitation of income, “It is 50,000 now, we expected it to be 1 lakh rupees of non-taxable interest. Also, for old-age pensions, a very mere amount is contributed by the central and state government, but there was no mention of that as well.”

Sheilu Sreenivasan, Chairperson, Dignity Lifestyle Foundation, said, “Overall I find that the budget is very tuned to empowering the economic structure of the country, but there is nothing in terms of how some of the disadvantaged sectors like the senior citizens, women, disabled could benefit from this year's budget.”

“We have seen previous governments allocating funds for the war widows, women, children and senior citizens but that is not happening now. So our best hope should be that if overall the economy improves then all the segments should also get benefits,” added Sreenivasan.