As India overtakes China because the world’s most populous nation, there’s a disaster of inhabitants in components of the nation the place fertility has fallen under alternative ranges and migration has left behind ghost cities inhabited by the aged. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas travels to Kumbanad, a city in Kerala state which is grappling with the results of an ageing society.

For years, colleges in a drowsy city in Kerala have been going through an uncommon downside: college students are scarce and lecturers need to exit on the lookout for them. They additionally need to pay from their pockets to convey college students to the college.

A 150-year-old authorities higher main college – which educates college students as much as the age of 14 – in Kumbanad has 50 college students on its rolls, down from about 700 till the late Eighties. Most of them are from poor and underprivileged households who dwell on the fringe of the city. With solely seven college students, grade seven is the biggest class. In 2016, the category had just one scholar.

Getting sufficient college students to the college is a problem. Each of its eight lecturers fork out 2,800 rupees ($34; £28) each month to pay for auto rickshaws (tuk-tuks) ferrying college students from house to high school and again. They additionally go door-to-door on the lookout for pupils. Even the few personal colleges within the space are sending out lecturers to search for college students – the largest one has barely 70 college students.

On a muggy afternoon not too long ago on the higher main college, you possibly can barely hear the hum of classes and hubbub of squeals that type the soundscape of a busy schoolhouse. Instead, lecturers taught a number of kids in darkish, quiet lecture rooms. Outside, within the sun-baked courtyard ringing the constructing, a number of college students wandered round desultorily.

“What can we do? There are no children in this town. I mean, there are barely any people living here,” mentioned Jayadevi R, the principal, wryly.

She is correct. Kumbanad lies on the coronary heart of Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district the place the inhabitants is declining and ageing. This in a rustic the place 47% of individuals are under the age of 25; and two-thirds have been born after India liberalised its financial system within the early Nineteen Nineties.

Kumbanad and half-a-dozen verdant villages round it are house to some 25,000 individuals. Some 15% of the 11,118 houses listed below are locked up as a result of the house owners have migrated or dwell with their kids overseas, says Asha CJ, the native village council chief. There are 20 colleges, however only a few college students.

One hospital, a state-run clinic, greater than 30 diagnostic centres and three old-age houses are tips to its greying inhabitants. More than two dozen banks – together with eight branches inside lower than half a kilometre – vie for remittances from townspeople who dwell and work all around the world. Around 10% of the $100bn in remittances that India mopped up from Indians dwelling overseas final yr got here to Kerala.

Kerala – together with neighbouring Tamil Nadu – is a few kind of an outlier in teeming India: the decadal rise in inhabitants right here between 2001 and 2011 – when the final census was performed – was lowest (4.9%) amongst states. A brand new-born in Kerala can anticipate to dwell for 75 years towards the nationwide common of 69.

Fertility charges within the state have dipped under alternative ranges – 1.7 to 1.9 births per girl – for not less than 30 years now. Smaller households be sure that kids are educated effectively. This results in the younger migrating shortly inside and out of doors the nation for alternatives, leaving their mother and father at house.

“Education makes children aspire for better jobs and lives, and they migrate,” mentioned KS James of the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences.

“Their native places are then populated by their elderly parents, many of them living alone.”

Behind the tall metallic safety gates of her two-storey purple tiled house in Kumbaud, Annamma Jacob, 74, has been dwelling alone for so long as she will be able to keep in mind.

Her husband, a mechanical engineer with a state-owned oil firm, handed away within the early Eighties. Her 50-year-old son has been dwelling and dealing in Abu Dhabi for greater than twenty years. A daughter lives a number of miles away, however her husband has been working as a software program engineer in Dubai for 3 many years.

Her next-door neighbours are absent: one locked up her home and took her mother and father to Bahrain, the place she labored as a nurse; the opposite moved to Dubai and rented their place to an aged couple.

The neighbourhood is an image of desolation. Amidst a lush panorama of tapioca, banana, and teak bushes, good-looking homes with expansive yards stand vacant, their driveways scattered with dried leaves and automobiles coated in mud. CCTV cameras have taken the place of guard canines.

In vivid distinction to the cacophony of India’s chaotic and bustling cities, swathes of Kumbanad are surreally abandoned and half-frozen in time. It is a city deserted by lots of its inhabitants however it isn’t languishing in ruins. The abandoned homes are painted often, nearly like they anticipate individuals any day. Except, they hardly come.

“It is a very lonely life. I am also not keeping good health,” Ms Jacob mentioned.

Despite her coronary heart illness and arthritis, Ms Jacob has travelled overseas to spend time along with her son and grandchildren, and has vacationed in Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Israel along with her kids.

The issues strewn round in her carpeted front room inform you one thing about her hyperlinks with the world: imported paracetamol tablets, pistachios and cashew nuts, yellow paper flowers stuffed in China-made vases; and a bottle of imported physique wash.

I requested her why she constructed a sprawling 12-room home solely to dwell alone. “Everyone builds big houses here,” she smiled. “It’s about status.”

She spends a variety of time in her yard farm the place she grows tapioca, bananas, ginger, yam and jackfruit. At different instances, she meditates and reads newspapers. She has a canine known as Diana in a kennel outdoors.

“Some days, I only talk to Diana. She understands me.”

At her age and along with her failing well being, it’s exhausting to work on the farm. Ms Jacob mentioned she can not afford a farm hand. A scarcity of labour has meant steep work wages for the few who search for work. A every day labourer fees a thousand rupees for a six-hour day taking care of the farm. Even Ms Asha’s village council shouldn’t be capable of finding and afford individuals to digitise its information.

Just a few lanes away, Chacko Mammen, who suffers from coronary heart illness and diabetes, works in his little farm for 4 hours day by day, rising bananas. The 64-year-old labored in Oman for 3 many years as a salesman earlier than returning house. He shut a small enterprise after six years as a result of he didn’t discover sufficient individuals to work for him. Now, after a variety of effort, he grows and sells about 10kg of bananas day by day from his farm. “I just cannot afford a worker,” he mentioned.

Shoring up the work drive in an ageing society is at all times tough. Even migration of employees from different states does not at all times work, generally due to a mistrust of outsiders. Ms Jacob mentioned she didn’t choose hiring a migrant.

“I live alone. What if they kill me?” she mentioned.

In this mellow city of aged individuals and shuttered houses, there’s little or no crime.

The police mentioned thefts are uncommon as a result of individuals do not maintain a lot cash and valuables at house. They do not keep in mind the final time a homicide happened right here.

“It’s all very peaceful. We only get complaints about cheating. Old people being cheated by their relatives or domestic helps who forge their signatures and withdraw their money from banks,” mentioned Sajeesh Kumar V, the chief inspector of the native police station.

A yr in the past, a relative of an aged resident embezzled almost 10m rupees by faking her signature. Last yr the police arrested 4 promoters of a personal monetary agency which arrange store within the city and promised steep returns on deposits. When it started to default in what seemed like a ponzi scheme, some 500 native depositors went to the police.

“That was a big crime for this area,” mentioned Mr Kumar. “Otherwise we are mainly dealing with minor fights among residents – about some noise, or rubbish being dumped outside their home, someone’s wild tree branch encroaching on a neighbour’s farm. Those sort of things.”

The lack of crime implies that the police spends most of its time taking care of the previous. They often examine in on 160 single and ailing individuals; and have given away cellular alarms in a few of their houses to allow them to alert neighbours throughout emergencies. In 2020, the police broke down the door of a home when nobody answered the doorbell and located the resident, an aged girl, mendacity on the ground.

“We took her to the hospital, where she recovered, One of our jobs is also moving residents to old-age homes. We check on old people, we take them to doctors,” mentioned Mr Kumar.

“Old age is the only problem here,” mentioned Father Thomas John, who runs a geriatric centre in Kumbanad.

The city has three wheelchair accessible old-age houses with open areas, vast doorways and hallways. The Alexander Marthoma Memorial Geriatric Centre, a five-storey constructing alongside a 150-bed hospital, takes care of greater than 100 locals, aged between 85 and 101. Almost all are bedridden, and their households pay 50,000 rupees each month for his or her care. Sometimes the kids come and stick with them on the 16-year-old centre.

“Most of the children live abroad and have no option but to move the very old parents to old-age homes,” mentioned Father John.

Not far-off, the 75-year-old Dharmagiri Old Age Home homes 60 locals, all above 60 years of age. Last yr there have been 31 new admissions. There are separate buildings for women and men. The ready listing is rising: a brand new 30-room constructing that may accommodate 60 elders is developing.

“Most of the women who stay with us are victims of cheating. Some of them have been abandoned by their families,” mentioned Father KS Mathews, who runs the house.

The ailing aged, old-age houses, labour shortages, migration of the younger, declining inhabitants, ghost cities.

“This is a story of any demographic change. This will be the story of the whole of India, finally,” mentioned Mr James.