COMMENTATOR (COMM.): Previously on Life . . .

NOAM CHOMSKY: We obviously have the resources to guarantee quite decent lives for people. And if we don't do it, it's a crime.

FAITH INNERARITY: We are at a crossroads. The population is ageing.

FRED SAI: Today we have got old people whose children have gone away in foreign countries - and they have got nobody to look after them. Our social structures have broken down.

COMM: Advances in science and healthcare mean that today, all round the world, more people live longer. At the same time, in many developed countries, more women are choosing not to have children. The result is that in some countries there is a growing population of old people with too few young people to take care of them. It's a dilemma facing three very different countries: Japan, India and Tunisia. All are urgently seeking solutions to the problem of how to look after their so-called "Silver Generation".

COMM: Mrs. Bani lives in Calcutta, alone.

MRS BANI GUPTA (Translation): We used to be a family of four - my husband, my two girls and I. After my eldest girl finished school, she left for Delhi. Then we were three: my husband, my little girl and I. Suddenly my husband passed away. Then we were two: my little girl and I. As I had to bring her up, I took a job at a school. My life became limited to school and home.

Slowly, I sank in to depression. I used to get irritated even with my little girl. I've spent many sleepless nights. I realised I had to get a hold of myself. I did not to go to a doctor for help - I decided to get involved with others. I joined the Democratic Women's Association in Western Bengal. Slowly, very slowly, I emerged from my depression. I used to go there twice a week. So many women came with such serious problems that my own crisis seemed insignificant.

OLD WOMAN (TRANSLATION): I've raised three children, married off two daughters. One girl was returned. The other became a widow. My son has become a heroin addict, he steals, he sells my things to buy heroin. He doesn't even have a place of his own. I don't feel strong enough to work in six houses - I've been working as a maid for twenty years.

OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): Azirul Islam is my name. I live here in Pathargata. I am seventy-nine years old. My parents, my brothers have always looked after our family. Today families living collectively are finished. Previously there were twenty members of the family. Now there are up to hundred and fifty members in the family. The output from our land is not enough to support us and nowadays it is not easy to get work or even earn a living. Because our population is increasing so rapidly, people live under great stress. It makes them self-centred. Today the refrain is always, 'Me and mine'; mental attitudes, values, have all changed. In our times son looked after father, father looked after son. Everyone cared for each other. Sons now think, 'If I look after my parents I can't look after my own family.' Today liquor and heroin have come to the villages. Our boys are becoming addicts, of no use to us.

MRS BANI (TRANSLATION): I work with the women's movement in the city; old people come to us there with the same problems as here. There, too, sons are taking up drugs, children are neglecting their parents, and some sons are even seizing their parents' houses and turning them out into the streets. The old people in the city suffer the same fate. Because I spend money trying to look good - I go for a facial and dye my hair - people tease me. But I need this to stay happy and well. People taunt me - they say I've become trendy. But for me being modern is courageous, self-sufficient, independent and working for others. I see this as real progress, as being modern.

COMM: Widows in India are expected to literally fade away - dressing in drab, inconspicuous clothes - usually white. But Mrs Bani Gupta was a dancer in her youth. In her determination now to defy tradition and keep up with the times, she loves bright colours - and she still dances.

MRS BANI (TRANSLATION): When I'm disturbed or restless, I dance and sing when I'm on my own. Today I realise that it's because I'm an artist that I've been able to regain my peace of mind and socialise again.

OLD MAN (TRANSLATION): We elderly people come here for a walk. Feeling old or not depends on one's mental attitude: if you feel old, you become old. I keep busy with my hobbies: I cook, I read; I play cards and chess, I socialise and I travel.

MRS BANI (TRANSLATION): The break up of large families is affecting old people, especially women. We need homes for our old people. They should be able to live there with dignity. The problems are the same in the city and the villages. The state should be planning homes for old people and developing them in an organised manner.

COMM: While India is now home to the largest population of old and very old people, in Japan they live longer than anywhere else in the world. Men on average live to the age of seventy-eight and women to eighty five. Here in Tokyo, one in four citizens will reach the age of sixty-five or older in the twenty-first century - a proportion unprecedented in the history of civilisation.

Japan's new 'silver' society is the result of economic development and improvements in medical technologies. But the large rise in the numbers of the elderly also inevitably, means more sick, bedridden or senile old people. This is, in turn, means an urgent need for more care. Setsuko is typical of many women of her generation. At seventy-seven, she chooses to remain independent from her children, living alone in Tokyo and pursuing her hobby of writing.

SETSUKO (TRANSLATION): Young people and old people have very different lifestyles. Young people eat at different times and do different things. So living together is inconvenient for us all. We need to keep a distance, keep the soup cool so to speak. That way we'll all be much happier. We're old for ten or twenty years or more, till we can't even move. This means our children are middle-aged by the time they start looking after us. This means parents disrupt their children's lives - in some cases, they destroy them completely.

COMM: Toshiko is in her forties and lives with her eighty-four year-old-mother, Tatsue. Tatsue used to live with her son but they were both alcoholics, so Toshiko stepped in. Though this looks like an ordinary apartment, it is in fact an old people's home or 'Senior House' in Urawa, north of Tokyo. The house is part of an experimental group of homes built by the Lifestyle Science Research Centre. It's unusual because it's been built within easy reach of town, is open to the community and allows friends or families - like Toshiko and her mother - to live together.

TOSHIKO (TRANSLATION): For me, the best thing is that I can leave my mother on her own. I'm very busy at work, and in the evenings I like to do exactly what I want, go to a concert or out to drinks with my friends. If we didn't live here in this special house, we wouldn't have been able to overcome our problems. I would have collapsed. I'd have had to stop work and leave my company - actually, I'd hate to be a full-time carer - I'd always be worried that she might have started a fire or something. I'd be stressed out all the time.

PART TWO

COMM: Many people who care for the elderly are now getting on in life themselves. Kuniko is sixty-five and looks after her ninety-nine year old mother. She's dependent on a group of volunteers who provide informal, cheap home help for those unable to afford professional care. Shigeko and Reiko are two of these voluntary carers. They are supported by local government subsidies.

KUNIKO (TRANSLATION): While I'm out, they help with feeding her. They help her with the toilet and take her for walks. Since they've started coming to see us, my mother's changed for the better. When she's on her own with me, she's really selfish. But the carers talk to her and encourage her, so the relationship between me and my mother is getting better. If they stopped coming it would be very difficult for me. Physically it would be very hard. If they stopped coming we'd be at a real disadvantage.

COMM: Demographic changes in Japan are increasing the pressure on the government to provide more funds for nation-wide initiatives to care for the elderly. Over the last fifty years, Japan's whole social structure has undergone a profound upheaval. With the breakdown of the traditional extended family, there's been a large increase in the number of people living alone. Many young women today reject the traditional role of mother and housewife. Many are choosing not to have children, and the birth rate has fallen dramatically. Japanese women today have less than two children, compared with four or five before the Second World War. The danger is that, as the new century progresses, there won't be enough young people to look after the elderly. Independent women like Setsuko have contributed to the demographic revolution.

SETSUKO (TRANSLATION): I've always lived independently from my parents - I've been very independent since childhood. I was brought up like that and I taught my children to be independent. I don't want my children to have to take care of me, even if I do get sick. For the rest of my life, I want to live as healthily as possible. I want to try everything as far as I can. I want to learn new things I've never learnt before.

COMM: In some less industrialised countries, like Tunisia, demographic change has taken place slowly. In contrast to Japan, the traditional extended family remains strong and today's generation continues to look after its parents. Tunisia is proud of its culture which insists on respect for the elderly and maintains that the fast track to paradise could be through the love and devotion you pay your mother. The few exceptional individuals left with no family or means are cared for by the state. This is the only old people's home in the capital, Tunis. It has just a hundred and twenty residents. There are 800,000 old people in Tunisia but only one in a thousand lives in a home. Hedi has lived here for nine years.

HEDI (TRANSLATION): I'm very happy to be here because I have everything I could ask for.

COMM: Every morning Hedi's shaved in the home's barbershop.

HEDI (TRANSLATION): According to me, life here is the life of a prince or a princess. Do you know why? We are totally spoilt by the President of the Republic.

COMM: In 1994 Tunisia's President, Ben Ali, made it obligatory for working people to look after their parents. Four years later he pledged financial support for anyone willing to take in an old person without family. Hedi and his friends are a minority - most old people continue to live with their families.

Here, in Raf Raf, Fouzia lives with her husband's mother, brother and sister, as well as all their children. The entire family is supported by Fouzia's husband who lives in Paris.

FOUZIA (TRANSLATION): The presence of the whole family - I mean the in-laws and the grandparents - helps me a lot. It helps me alleviate the sorrow of my husband's absence and makes me feel I'm not on my own.

COMM: Fouzia believes that Arabs care for old people, unlike Europeans. Her views of Paris are bleak.

FOUZIA (TRANSLATION): I see their elderly suffering, and they seek refuge with us Arabs. You see an old lady in the park. She won't go and sit with a French woman. She comes to sit with us. Why? Because we make her feel welcome. The French woman considers her pet more important than an elderly woman.

COMM: Fouzia's husband, Albefatteh, is among one in twenty Tunisians now living in France. There are a hundred and fifty thousand Tunisian immigrants registered in Paris alone. They stick together and have virtually colonised part of the 'quartier' of Belleville, transforming it into their own Little Tunis. But though they have found work in the global marketplace of France most, like Albefatteh, remain fiercely protective of their culture and shun integration.

ALBEFATTEH (TRANSLATION): It's always difficult when one is far from home. Without going into detail, you have to be resistant and have a strong will, at times you have to abandon friends and live in isolation and hang on to your original values.

COMM: Saida, a divorced mother of four, has both her parents living with her. They've just arrived from Tunisia. Both are in poor health. Her mother is diabetic and her father needs a dangerous eye operation. Whatever the demands on her, Saida prefers to have her parents with her, fearing that if the family splits up they could lose their culture of caring for the old.

SAIDA (TRANSLATION): The life of the European and Arab woman is not the same. It's another culture. We have been brought up to respect our parents and grandparents.

COMM: Saida's determined to keep her children close to her too, so that they don't absorb western values.

SAIDA (TRANSLATION): If they were separated, if I didn't take care of them, or if they lived on campus - that would be a risk. But with education and the family life, which they have now, the risk won't arise. They will continue with their studies; they will take turns in looking after their grandparents, as I do myself, and in turn they will look after me, as I become older and dependent on them.

COMM: Ridah, a young chef working in Paris's oldest Tunisian restaurant, proves Saida's point. Though he has been living in Paris for eight years, Ridah, like his friends, has remained true to his traditional values.

RIDAH (TRANSLATION): Absolutely truly, nobody I know sees sending money back to Tunisia as a problem. It's his duty. Mother's milk creates an affection between mother and son, and - by the grace of God - all our mothers have breastfed us. That contact with the breast strengthens the affection.

COMM: By resisting Western influence, Tunisia's culture has so far managed to remain intact - and the residents of Tunis's only old people's home can be confident of a comfortable, enjoyable life at the government's expense. Mohammed Moncef Achour is director of the old people's home. Despite the current wellbeing of his residents, he worries about the future of the old people in his charge.

MOHAMMED (TRANSLATION): The biggest problem is that we're coming under more and more foreign influences. Our values and our young people with all the new media and information are beginning to be influenced by values that are not our own. We feel our culture's eroding and we don't know where we are. It's a radical problem for society - and so for the care of old people.

COMM: Migration, tourism and the media will inevitably have an impact on the next generation - however protective their parents may be. But, for now, Hedi's generation can still face the future with confidence.

END