Old age problems are often compounded by illiteracy, poverty, age bias, informal employment and gender, besides inefficient welfare schemes. Urgent steps need to be taken to address the concerns.

Elite slum dwellers bargain, negotiate and build complex alliances outside the slum to gain power to displace, marginalise and exclude the poorest slum dwellers. Widowhood, one of the most vulnerable statuses, faces dispossession shaping conflicts within slums.

Environmental change is affecting food security, particularly for small farmers living on the margins. It is estimated that worldwide around 850 million people are chronically hungry and six million children presently die of hunger every year. Of the 800 million undernourished individuals worldwide, over 60 per cent are in Asia and 28 per cent in the African continent.

Asian countries are experiencing demographic transition from a young to an increasingly older population, unfolding against a context often characterised by persistent poverty, gender vulnerability, economic strain, constricted public resources and limited civil institutions to support the elderly.