On December 5th the Lok Sabha passed the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, 2007, which makes it obligatory for the persons who inherit property of their aged relatives to ensure their upkeep.

Children who abandon parents in their twilight years may now face three months imprisonment and cannot even appeal against the punishment.

That we needed a Bill to safeguard a basic tenet of a family should make us all reflect on the extent to which erosion has taken place in our midst.

The day the “news” was carried in the newspapers I was at a friend’s place. This person has two teenaged children; a son and a daughter. We chanced to speak about the Bill when my friend, jocularly, “warned” the son that he better take note of the law.

Later in the day, recalling the conversation, it occurred to me that the friend did not ask the daughter (who too was around) to take note. I was disturbed to realise that even in a modern, educated person’s understanding, the law could only be referring to the son. The fact is it, it does not. And the report makes this point very clear.

Few people are aware that a provision already exists under the Criminal Procedure Code 1973 (Section 125) for maintenance of parents. But it had many inadequacies and the new Bill is a significant improvement on those.  One is that the procedure of having to go the through the Court for claiming maintenance is now done away with.

The new legislation makes it simpler, speedier and inexpensive. And two, unlike the restrictive definition of parents in the earlier code, a broad definition of parents and children have been included in the proposed Bill to cover grandparents, grandchildren, adopted step and even relatives or anyone who inherit the property of the senior citizens.

The Bill clearly defines every one of the terms used. “Children” includes son, daughter, grandson and grand-daughter but does not include a minor,  “maintenance” includes provision for food, clothing, residence and medical attendance and treatment, “parent” means father or mother whether biological, adoptive or step father or step mother, as the case may be, whether or not the father or the mother is a senior citizen, etc. How effective it is in addressing the issues depends upon whether the society has full understanding of the provisions.

Unfortunately, if the past is any indication, modern laws seldom make any significant change in the mind set of a people steeped in Manu’s codes. The continuance of the dowry system, five decades after the law has granted the daughter the same rights as the son while inheriting their father’s property is one clear example.

Now that we have a Bill that lays down that the daughters are as much obliged as the sons to care for the parents, will the society bury the phrase “paraya dhan”?

I doubt it will. And how would it if, like my friend, people are not even aware that legally, a daughter cannot “wash her hands” off her duties to her parents (and grandparents). Hence wider publicity needs to be given to such landmark legislations so that the ideas embodied in them reaches the person in the street and penetrates his/her thinking.

And if that were to happen, perhaps some day, we could even get rid of another disgraceful phrase: “female foeticide”.  For if it is accepted that the daughter is as good as the son to take care of you in old age, where is the compulsion to beget a male offspring.