The basis of a dignified existence for the elderly will have to be economic self-sufficiency and access to affordable and reliable healthcare. A welfare system that ensures these basic forms of support will reduce their dependence on the family. Gender and economic status are both important factors in determining the nature and extent of this dependence. How the Indian state treats senior citizens is also inseparable from its attitude to women and the disabled, for instance. And here too the inequality endemic to Indian society compounds the disadvantages suffered by these populations. Then there is the paraphernalia of the Indian bureaucracy, designed to cause harassment and inconvenience in every aspect of daily life, prohibitively complicating senior citizens’ access to every entitlement. Urban development, rural backwardness, and a sharp increase in crimes against elderly people living alone are also what determine their quality of life. But none of this can be achieved by occasional reprimands from the courts. The state and its better-empowered subjects will have to bring to the matter a degree of humanity and political will that is not within the courts’ purview to enforce.