Why does India need a trained workforce for elderly care?

Every day Sreeni wakes up at 4.30 am and checks on his mother. If she is unsteady on waking up, he will assist her to the raised toilet and wait outside as she independently uses it, assuring her that help is just outside. There is a schedule of medicines, clearly sorted and kept by her bedside. The BP monitor and the glucometer reassure him that everything is in the range for her age. He learnt it all by himself, one emergency visit after another to the hospital. Hip pain was ignored till it became a debilitating fracture, a sudden loss of consciousness detected as low sodium — each crisis was a hard lesson in the trial-and-error reality of informal caregiving. Every day millions like Sreeni wake up and perform their respective self-taught routines to take care of their parents or dependants.