Care for the elderly has increased in both duration and intensity, particularly because of better medical conditions resulting in increased lifespan. Thus understanding the numerous dimensions of ageing will play a consequential role in determining future national policies. This book addresses a wide spectrum of issues faced by the elderly in India, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, primarily from social and economic perspectives. South Asian cultures more than others have traditionally endorsed living arrangements that entail co-residence of aged parents with their children, which has been the crux of the support system of the aged. Significant shifts in family structure spurred by modernization prompted increased family nucleation.

All three countries offer interesting insights as India is projected to have an ageing population of 90 million in the near future, and Sri Lanka has one of the highest proportions of ageing people in the developing world. By delving further, one can view these trends in the context of widespread poverty and inadequate social security systems in India, and high human development indicators in Sri Lanka.

Care for the elderly has increased in both duration and intensity, particularly because of better medical conditions resulting in increased lifespan. Thus understanding the numerous dimensions of ageing will play a consequential role in determining future national policies. This book addresses a wide spectrum of issues faced by the elderly in India, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, primarily from social and economic perspectives. South Asian cultures more than others have traditionally endorsed living arrangements that entail co-residence of aged parents with their children, which has been the crux of the support system of the aged. Significant shifts in family structure spurred by modernization prompted increased family nucleation.

All three countries offer interesting insights as India is projected to have an ageing population of 90 million in the near future, and Sri Lanka has one of the highest proportions of ageing people in the developing world. By delving further, one can view these trends in the context of widespread poverty and inadequate social security systems in India, and high human development indicators in Sri Lanka.

Carla Risseeuw, Rajni Palriwala, and Kamala Ganesh with a special contribution by Maithreyi Krishnaraj, have brought together their expertise to explore a European welfare state, the Netherlands.

They deal with the public and private domains, the public arrangements of the welfare state and the private social arrangements of family, friendship, and care relations. They focus on two categories of people for whom care arrangements and policy are crucial to their everyday lives: the elderly, and the single parents.

This book is a unique contribution to our knowledge of the working of the welfare state, for two reasons. First of all, the majority of the scholarly literature about the welfare state tended to neglect care and gender. This book moves beyond the formal institutions and policies, by analyzing public discourses on care in general. Secondly, the book has a truly intercultural perspective. It moves beyond the well-known insider-outsider dichotomy, where outsiders uncover or illuminate hidden assumptions of another culture often not perceived by the insiders. For those working in the area of the state and the provision of care in a comparative perspective this book is innovative and inspiring. Its methodological approach and emphasis on the importance of the cultural context and the way citizens live' relationships of care, deserve widespread attention and following.

This book appeals to a wide range of readers: scholars on the welfare state, policy makers and other professionals working in the care sector, feminists and researchers, teachers and students from various fi elds of political science, sociology, economics and anthropology. And those concerned with issues in the arenas of care, welfare, gender, family, friendship, parenting and ageing.

"Carla Risseeuw" is a professor in anthropology at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands). "Rajni Palriwala" is a professor in sociology at the University of Delhi (India). "Kamala Ganesh" is a professor in sociology at the University of Mumbai (Bombay) (India). "Maithreyi Krishnaraj" is an economist and Director of the Research Centre for Women's Studies in Bombay (India).