Published : 06 Jul 2026, 07:54 AM
Updated : 08 Sep 2026, 09:22 AM
Twilight of Dignity: The Cost of Ageing
Token lifeline: State allowances of just Tk 650 a month vanish instantly, failing to cover even a basic monthly supply of rice
Family excuse: The modest state handout ironically deters children from providing vital financial support to their ageing parents
Wealthy beneficiaries: Flawed targeting leaves the poorest excluded, while over 60 percent of safety-net recipients are neither poor nor vulnerable
Defeated by inflation: Despite rising budgets, runaway inflation has eroded the allowance, turning a constitutional promise into mockery
For most of his life, Babar Ali earned his living through hard manual labour. Now, at 70, he spends his days in a remote village on the edge of the Sundarbans counting painkillers instead of wages.
Years of physical work have left him with persistent back pain and a body worn down by age. Visiting a doctor has become an unaffordable luxury. When the pain grows unbearable, he buys a few inexpensive tablets from a neighbourhood pharmacy and hopes they will last.
His wife Mahiful Bibi, 66, has suffered from what the family describes as unusual behavioural problems for several years. Traditional healers have tried to treat her, but nothing has changed.
The couple, who live in Chunkuri village in Khulna's Dacope Upazila, raised four sons and four daughters. Yet old age has brought little security. Only one son remains unmarried, and none of their sons provide regular support. Their daughters occasionally send small amounts of money, but it is rarely enough to keep the household afloat.
Like millions of elderly Bangladeshis, Babar receives the government's Old Age Allowance -- Tk 650 a month, paid once every three months. The money, he says, disappears almost as soon as it arrives.
"It barely covers my medicines. How does it help my household?" he asks.
The arithmetic is unforgiving.
The landless couple need roughly a kilogramme of rice each day to eat three meals. Even assuming rice costs Tk 50 per kg -- below prevailing market prices of Tk 55 to Tk 60 -- a month's supply alone costs Tk 1,500.
"Then there's cooking oil, lentils, spices and vegetables. Can anyone survive on Tk 650 a month even without buying fish or meat?" Babar says.
Ironically, the allowance has created another burden.
Because their children know they receive government support, they often assume their parents no longer need financial help. The modest allowance has become an excuse for family members to step back.
"Poor people don't even deserve to live," Babar says quietly. "Once you become old, it's even worse. My children think we're getting government money. But they all have families of their own too."
His story reflects a broader question confronting Bangladesh's social protection system: how much protection can Tk 650 really buy?
Constitutional Promise Meets Economic Reality
Social protection is not simply a welfare programme in Bangladesh; it is a constitutional obligation.
Article 15 of the Constitution places responsibility on the state to ensure social security. In 2015, the government adopted the National Social Security Strategy to bring dozens of welfare initiatives under a more coherent framework.
The Old Age Allowance was introduced with an ambitious objective -- to strengthen both the financial security and social dignity of elderly citizens.
Whether Tk 650 a month can achieve either is another matter.
Tawohidul Haque, an associate professor at the Institute of Social Welfare and Research at Dhaka University, argues that policymakers focus on distributing money without asking whether it can realistically meet people's needs.
"The state gives people some money in the name of allowances," he says. "But it never seriously considers whether that amount can meet basic needs at current market prices."
His assessment is blunt.
"The amount these people receive is, in reality, a form of mockery of their helplessness."
Government officials acknowledge that the allowances remain modest but argue that Bangladesh spends a substantial amount overall on social protection.
Economist KAS Murshid, former director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), believes the debate begins with a misunderstanding of what social protection actually means.
"We label many things as social protection," he says. "If we examine them carefully, we find that many are not social protection at all. The figures are inflated to create the impression that enormous sums are being allocated."
The BNP-led government has attempted to reshape the system through a new Family Card initiative introduced in March.
Built around the principle that families -- not individuals -- are the basic unit of development, the initiative aims to provide a more integrated safety net for low-income households.
The proposed 2026-27 budget allocates Tk 145 billion for the scheme, making it the third-largest social protection programme in the country.
Under the initiative, each eligible woman-headed household will receive Tk 2,500 a month in direct financial assistance. The government hopes to bring around 40 million families under the programme over the next four to five years.
Social Welfare Minister AZM Zahid Hossain says the Family Card has become the government's immediate priority, although officials also plan to expand existing allowance programmes.
The proposed budget raises the Old Age Allowance -- and allowances for widows and abandoned women -- from Tk 650 to Tk 700 a month while increasing beneficiary numbers by one million each.
Disability allowances will rise from Tk 900 to Tk 1,000, with another 350,000 beneficiaries added.
Yet for elderly Bangladeshis like Babar, even those increases may do little to bridge the widening gap between government support and the rising cost of simply staying alive.
A Lifetime of Work, a Retirement of Uncertainty
Nearly 100 years old, Gazi Sarder can no longer hear clearly or see well enough to move around without difficulty. Once a brick breaker, he spent decades doing backbreaking work before age finally caught up with him.
In his final working years, he and his wife Sakhina Bibi survived by gathering wild vegetables from canals and wetlands around their village in Dacope and selling them in local markets. Even that is now beyond their strength.
Illness has become a constant companion, but medicine is often bought in instalments because they cannot afford a full prescription.
"Life just doesn't go on anymore," Gazi says with a weary sigh.
Asked whether the Old Age Allowance helps run the household, Sakhina barely hesitates.
"With prices this high, Tk 100 disappears just by buying 2kg of rice."
Today, the couple depend largely on occasional support from their daughters. When no help comes, Sakhina returns to the fields to collect leafy greens for sale, leaving her frail husband alone at home.
"After shopping, there's almost nothing left," she says. "We somehow survive. Buying new clothes is simply out of the question."
When Gazi's allergy and eye medication costs Tk 500, she often returns from the pharmacy with only Tk 200 worth.
"We buy the rest only after saving enough money," she says.
Like many elderly people in their area, they receive little additional support. Because they already receive the allowance, they are often excluded from other government assistance. Their expectations are modest.
"If the allowance were just a little higher, that would be enough," Sakhina says.
Growing Budget, Shrinking Value
Bangladesh introduced the Old Age Allowance in the 1997-98 fiscal year with a monthly payment of Tk 100 for just over 400,000 beneficiaries. Nearly three decades later, the programme covers 6.1 million elderly people, while the proposed budget would raise the monthly payment from Tk 650 to Tk 700.
The programme's annual allocation has grown from Tk 125 million to more than Tk 52.39 billion.
Yet inflation has steadily eroded the allowance's purchasing power.
A 2022 study by the Bangladesh National Social Welfare Council concluded that the current payment is insufficient to meet recipients' living costs. Surveying beneficiaries in Feni, Cumilla, Barishal and Patuakhali, researchers found that more than 93 percent considered the allowance inadequate, while almost all old-age beneficiaries said it was nowhere near enough to meet basic needs.
Dr Mohammad Ashraful Alam of Dhaka University, who led the research, argues that both the allowance itself and the overall allocation remain inadequate.
Even so, he views the government's gradual increases as a sign of improving fiscal capacity.
"Our goal should be to become a welfare state where citizens' economic security is guaranteed," he says.
Who Really Receives Protection?
The size of the budget is only one part of the problem.
Studies repeatedly suggest that social protection programmes suffer from poor targeting, political influence and administrative weaknesses.
A World Bank assessment found that between one-fifth and half of Old Age Allowance recipients were not actually poor. Research by RAPID concluded that weak beneficiary selection often led to resources being misallocated while many deserving families were left out.
Analysis of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' 2022 Household Income and Expenditure Survey found that nearly 63 percent of households benefiting from at least one social protection programme were neither poor nor vulnerable.
By contrast, only 13.5 percent of moderately poor households and 6.6 percent of the extreme poor received assistance.
Those findings are reflected in the experience of Akima Begum, a 65-year-old woman from Chandpur's Shahrasti Upazila.
Although neither she nor her unemployed husband has a stable income, she receives neither the Old Age Allowance nor a subsidised food card.
"So many people receive these benefits. We get nothing," she says.
Yet a neighbour with a thriving business and a concrete house continues to benefit from two subsidised food cards, one registered in his sister's name despite her living elsewhere.
Local Union Parishad member Billal Hossain says political patronage heavily influenced beneficiary lists in the past and left many genuinely poor households excluded. He says authorities are ready to verify recipients again if instructed by the government.
Beyond Tokenism
Critics argue that Bangladesh's social protection debate has become preoccupied with headline budget figures rather than real impact.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue notes that almost 43 percent of the proposed social protection budget goes towards government pensions and agricultural subsidies rather than programmes directly targeting poor households.
Excluding pensions, social protection spending amounts to just 1.6 percent of GDP -- well below the Asian Development Bank's recommendation of at least 5 percent.
KAS Murshid believes policymakers should stop measuring success by the size of allocations alone.
"We need to decide clearly who we want to help, how much support they need and how we will deliver it," he says. "Giving tiny amounts to millions may sound impressive, but it has very little impact."
Government officials insist reforms are under way.
The Department of Social Services says beneficiaries are now verified every three months and acknowledges that some irregularities persist, including political influence and delays in removing deceased recipients from the rolls.
Social Welfare Minister Zahid says complaints about previous programmes are being investigated, while the new Family Card scheme has been designed to eliminate political favouritism by targeting households through universal criteria rather than party affiliation.
For Babar and Gazi, however, policy debates and budget statistics remain far removed from everyday reality.
Their lives are measured not in billions of taka allocated, but in the price of a bag of rice, a strip of painkillers and the hope that growing old in Bangladesh might one day come with something more substantial than a token payment.
