roopesh_kumar May 19th, 2009

Have you ever had to confirm your signature for various ownership documents (primarily shares) after a long period of time ? This seems so divorced from reality, how a person is expected to maintain exactly the same signature over decades of one’s life beats me!

In fact, this problem is far more exacerbated in the case of elders, in whose case various ailments/ weaknesses make it even harder to maintain the same signature and obviously this becomes worse as you grow older, leading to all sorts of problems when any transaction is envisaged.

There is a lot of work going on in biometrics, and one hopes that at some point in the not too distant future, the technologies will be available for wide consumption, and usable in ‘signing’ documents. And I don’t mean electronic signature, not until they require passwords - a big monster in today’ electronic world, where someone wants 4 digits with numbers, another wants special characters, another wants it to be changed every month etc!). It is so difficult to remember so many different passwords – imagine elders trying to deal with this!

Meanwhile, why don’t we go back to the thumb impression days, at the risk of appearing uneducated – it at least takes care of this problem and it takes care of it when you are at your most vulnerable. Isnt thumb impression ultimately a biometric method ?

Quite a provocative thought and probably will not occur, so what do we do meanwhile – how do we make it easier (and fraud free) ?

First of all reality needs to be recognized, and that reality is that signatures will change.

People (and especially transfer agents/ registrars) must recognize this reality and have a process to deal with it, especially given the wide ownership of securities among the public nowadays. I have come across so many senior citizens sending and resending affidavits to registrars to confirm they are who they say they are, viz. to get a share dematerialised.

• Are the registrars allowed to reject a court document viz an affidavit ?
• Why does each company require a fresh affidavit to be filed with them and not a photocopy ?
• Why does every company and every registrar have its own format of an affidavit ?
• Why is it so hard for the registrar to understand that the signature will not match 100% and have a process to deal with it ? Or this something that the law has to change ?

Cut to today’s world where in all likelihood, this registrar process would be in a BPO company staffed by youngsters, and there is a defined ‘process’ and there you are – more likely than not, the doc will be rejected, why take a risk ?

Shouldnt the process be that if my signature changes, i get this fact verified by a specified authority and then that particular document is sufficient for everyone else ? Can this be done ?

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roopesh_kumar May 13th, 2009

Children become adults and move away to follow their career/ life, more often than not in a different location. The elders retire and become weaker/ more susceptible to ailments with age. They need more and more support as they age. How is this ensured ?

Historically, the extended family was in place where 2 or 3 generations lived in the same house, and more often than not there would be enough relatives, friends, cousins all in same city/ town, all of whom would look after each other physically, socially and emotionally. This system worked as long as majority of the new generations stayed in the same city, allowing the overall eco-system to be constantly regenerated with youngsters.

However, the reality now is that majority of youngsters are actually moving away, and this is happening across the eco-system, so the eco-system itself is not getting regenerated – it is breaking down. The secondary impact of this is that some elders now have to make the (sometimes) tougher choice of leaving their friendly environment for a completely unfamiliar place to be with their sons/ daughters, for the assurance that there will be someone to take care of them. The eco-system breaks down further. The situation is mildly different in developed societies, where the extremely expensive ‘old age home’ concept allows elders to be supported, hopefully with dignity.

Isnt it strange that there are no options for the families who don’t have the old age home option or do not wish to go for that option ?

One of the options nowadays are the townships being developed around senior citizens, with various facilities and options tailored for them. However, the above is a BIG commitment, a purchase that is likely to be one of the biggest purchases in a middle class family, and secondly, there is the issue of uprooting an elderly person from his current environment into a new one. I wonder what the market response to such offerings are..

Eldess, the platform for taking care of your Elders, is focusing on the entire set of needs of Elders, at their residence. An interesting concept, this focuses on solving the issue, which is support problems (whether help or security or healthcare) without saying that you need to move bag and baggage to a completely new place/ area to solve them..

The eco-system may still survive, albeit in one of the above forms – in townships/ old age homes OR turn to the phone and internet to maintain contact with distant ones, meet old friends where you are without change in lifestyles, and buy services where necessary.

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