In 2013, Harish Rana fell from a fourth-floor balcony.

That accident left him in a persistent vegetative state for over 13 years.

Until his parents approached the Supreme Court in March 2026. The Court, for the first time, allowed passive euthanasia in his case.

Now, this story is extreme. But this is a reality that many Indian families eventually face, watching their loved ones tied to ventilators, unsure what they would have wanted.

And now a shift is happening. More people in their 50s and 60s are making living wills. These are documents that essentially communicate what you want when you can no longer speak.

One such person is Sarita, a 62-year old retired corporate professional. Her son Anmol supports her choice to make a living will.

So what are living wills? Why are more people getting them and what is the process of getting a living will?

To learn more and to hear directly from consumers, lawyers and doctors, check out the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kudrat (Host): Sarita is 62. She spent decades in the corporate world, making high-stakes decisions every day. Two years ago she retired and now serves as an independent board director.

In April 2026, she made what many would consider a deeply uncomfortable decision—deciding what should happen to her when she can no longer speak for herself.

She got a living will made. As a birthday gift to herself.

A living will, also called an Advance Medical Directive, is a legal document that lets you decide in advance what kind of medical treatment you want… or don’t want… if you ever become seriously ill and unable to speak for yourself. It is essentially your voice when you can no longer speak.

When I asked Sarita what compelled her to take the plunge, her answer was straightforward.

Sarita: Why not? You know, that was a thought that came to my mind. Why should I not do this? I didn't have any concrete reason for not doing it. So I said, let's go ahead, find out more, and find out the process, the procedure, and go ahead. There was never a question of why to do it. It was always a why not? That propelled me to go ahead with it.

Kudrat (Host): For years, this idea existed only in theory in India.

And then, in 2018, the Supreme Court of India, in its landmark Common Cause judgment, recognised the right to die with dignity as part of Article 21: the Right to Life. It legalised passive euthanasia and living wills for the first time.

But the process was extremely cumbersome: it required a magistrate’s approval, multiple layers of verification, and involved long delays. As a result, very few people actually made one.

Then in January 2023, the Supreme Court stepped in again and simplified the guidelines. No more mandatory magistrate countersignature. A notary or gazetted officer is now enough. The process became much more practical.

Since then, there has been a slow but noticeable rise in people, especially senior professionals and retirees like Sarita, getting their living wills made. States like Maharashtra and Goa are even creating digital registries to keep track of these documents.

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today’s episode, we look at living wills. How is a new generation of Indians choosing to plan for the end of life with clarity and dignity?

Kudrat (Host): Sarita told me she first heard of living wills about a year ago when she read a newspaper article. That story planted a seed. Over the following months, she came across LinkedIn posts and then listened to a podcast episode by Founding Fuel titled “Understanding the Living Will: Clarity, Autonomy, and Care at the End of Life.”

Kudrat (Host): Doctors know how difficult these decisions are. And they’re rarely made in calm moments.

They’re made in ICUs. In emergencies. When families are forced to decide quickly, often without knowing what the patient would have wanted.

Sarita didn’t want her son Anmol finding himself in that position.

Listening to the podcast sealed the deal. She discussed the idea of a living will with her son Anmol.

Anmol: Well, at that point, I immediately had a visceral reaction. I got a reality check that, okay, she's getting old. Something will happen to her in the future, and I must be mentally prepared, psychologically prepared, financially prepared. All of these thoughts were coming in, and she explained to me the advantage of the living will, and that was to give her peace of mind that in case she was not in control of her own body and her health, I would be the one responsible enough to give her the peace that she would've wanted.

Kudrat (Host): I asked Anmol if he had any resistance to the idea of a living will.

Anmol: No, I actually welcome the idea without any apprehensions. I was pretty much in line with what my mother was thinking. I think what she did was a very mature and good decision because nobody wants to live or exist with ambiguity.

Kudrat (Host): Once she got the go-ahead from her son, Sarita made an appointment at the Living Will Clinic at PD Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai—one of few dedicated clinics of its kind in India.

Sarita: So it's an OPD clinic, like any other clinic in the hospital at Indi Hospital, Mumbai. As I said, it's only on Saturdays, I think between 10 to 11:30. So I had to take a prior appointment and pay the OPD fees at the reception. Fortunately, there was no line, and the doctor saw me. She had a printout of the form. She took me through each and every part of the form. She shared the Supreme Court judgment.

Kudrat (Host): I spoke to the doctor Sarita met there—Dr. Smriti Khanna, a palliative care physician who runs the clinic.

Dr Smriti Khanna: We are receiving anywhere from 20 to 40 inquiries every month. We also do outreach programs where we speak to members of, say, a club or a community, and we speak to a large group of people together to give them information about the living will and what it entails.

Kudrat (Host): Dr. Khanna told me they use a carefully prepared template developed by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy–the same think tank that played a key role in the Supreme Court case that made living wills feasible.

Sarita took her form home and filled it out carefully. There were questions like: Do you want CPR? Do you want chemotherapy or radiotherapy? Do you want aggressive treatment like chemo if recovery is unlikely? Where do you want to spend your end-of-life: hospital, hospice, or home?

Sarita: And then there was a whole section on end-of-life care, as they say, whether you want to stay in a hospice or you want to be at home, or do you want special attention towards alleviating mental distress or confusion so that you spend time with your loved ones, and would you want to be referred to any other people for anything else? As I said, for me, it was very clear that I just wanted it to be very, very simple and easy to follow, the instructions to be very easy to follow.

Kudrat (Host): Sarita said she made five copies of the form. One for her direct health representative–her son, Anmol. One for the local municipal health office. One for the Living Will clinic’s doctor.

She also organised two witnesses who would accompany her to the notary: two of her neighbors.

Sarita didn’t hire a lawyer, but many people do.

I spoke to one such lawyer.

Shruti: I'm Shruti Swaika. I am an advocate practicing for over 15 years now. I've been deeply involved in advising clients with estate planning and succession planning for a larger part of the decade.

But what we also see in living wills is people specifying that they want pain relief medication to be given. Very often, for example, in an irreversible coma, there may not be any pain, but there could be other situations where there is pain involved. So in a living will, they would talk about that. Irrespective of treatment being withdrawn, they would want to be given palliative care or pain management.

The other thing that we see, which people are now looking at doing, is organ donation through living wills.

Kudrat (Host): Shruti says she’s noticed that one of the biggest areas of confusion is between a regular will and a living will.

Less than 10% of Indians even have a regular will.

A living will is completely different: it’s not about property, it’s about your body and medical choices while you’re still alive.

Overall, Shruti says that especially since 2023, getting a living will made has become a pretty smooth process.

She has noticed that it helps sort out potential conflict in the future too.

Shruti: In fact, it gives them clarity. In case there isn't such a directive, then sometimes family members, especially if there are elder siblings, could have disagreeing views on how they want a parent's treatment to continue. These can resolve those disagreements. We don't see any issue with implementing these. Doctors are respectful of these documents. They are giving effect to them. They are following protocols and then giving effect to them.

Kudrat (Host): Essentially, this document does something crucial: it removes the heavy responsibility of guessing what your loved one might have wanted.

Sarita: I just wanted it very simple and easy to be followed. I'm a single parent. I didn't want my son to be burdened with this whole thing. Okay, do this now, do that. I just wanted it very simple. The idea is to make it easy, not just for me, but also for him.

I also have a trust built up for my son where financially it goes through a trust in my investments, and he gets a way of... so I'm doing all that I can to make life easy for my loved one. And this was one step in it. If I come to know tomorrow of any other process that makes it easy, like clearing up my papers, my documents, trying to dispose of clothes I don't use, trying to make life as easy as possible because, you know, I've seen it. I lost my eldest sister a couple of years ago, and I saw the mammoth task of cleaning the house, disposing of her clothes and her stuff and everything. It took so much time. So my question is, how can I make it easy for my loved one? Can I do it? And if the answer is yes, why not, you know?

Kudrat (Host): Living wills are meant to make these decisions easier.

But they don’t make them easy.

In her living will, Sarita was clear. She said that “in situations where my treating physician or team has determined that there is no scope of recovery, I have instructed that any life-prolonging medical procedure/treatment be withheld or withdrawn, and the course of natural death be permitted. These may be CPR/dialysis/chemotherapy/ventilator, etc.” She has also refused any specific place/hospice/home for the duration of end-of-life care. Nor have she named any specific physician to take care of her health.

She appointed Anmol as her Designated Healthcare Representative, giving him the power to act on her behalf. But she made one thing clear—her documented wishes in the living will should take priority over even her son’s personal feelings too.

Yet when I asked Anmol how he would actually handle that moment, his answer revealed how deeply complicated these situations remain—even with a living will in place.

Anmol: If that situation arises, I will be taking some time. A lot of success stories come up in newspapers about a coma patient getting fully healed, coming back after years. So I definitely would want to wait for at least a year before I decide to pull the plug in such a scenario because one may never know when miraculous things happen. And with the living will, I'll have the authority to take care of somebody after their condition, like a coma or accidents where they're neurologically impaired. I would still prefer to give some time, six months or a year, just because it's also a taxing decision even for me, so I would not rush into it. But the living will allows me to take a calculated decision on behalf of the person.

Kudrat (Host): This is the real human tension at the heart of living wills.

Sarita has drawn a line–her wishes should supersede everything else. But for Anmol, love and hope still pull in the other direction.

The living will of course doesn’t erase emotion. It simply gives families a clear anchor and legal protection when the hardest moments arrive.

Dr Smriti Khanna: The taboo around death or the difficulty in talking about death. So even if a person may want to have a very quiet, rational discussion about what is to be done if I'm at the end of life, it is very distressing for many family members to think about it, to sit down and talk about it, and to be able to complete the discussion also.

So some of the resistance that I have noticed has come from this area where families find it very difficult to even discuss this topic. And if one person from the family does want to discuss it, it's either, you know, let's be positive, let's stay positive and not talk about death, or it gets overwhelmingly difficult for the rest of the family to discuss. But if this is going to happen, then it's also going to be difficult for them to handle the situation and to be able to think about what the options are and what can be done in a terminally ill situation also.

So even though it is a tough conversation, I would encourage people, I would encourage families to have it because it's always better to have it early rather than late. Family members who find it very distressing, if at least we are able to start having the conversation at the beginning, may find it less and less distressing as time goes by or as more conversations around it happen.

And I think that the living will is an excellent way to normalize the entire discussion around death and dying, around dignity of life and how dignity of life should extend right till the end of life. So if you would like to have a dignified life, you should have a dignified end of life too.

Kudrat (Host): Living wills represent a shift. From reactive, guilt-filled decisions in hospital corridors… to planned endings made with clarity and intention.

Of course, India is still far from widespread adoption of living wills. Most people in this country don’t even have a regular will.

But as healthcare becomes more complex, and lifespans get longer, that shift may not remain optional for long.

Kudrat (Host): That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.