New Delhi, Oct. 13 -- India's pension reform has quietly become one of the most sophisticated in the developing world. The National Pension System (NPS) now runs on shared digital rails that allow the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) to launch a new product within months. Its recent wave of initiatives, including child accounts, a simplified variant for informal workers and phased withdrawals at retirement, shows a system iterating faster than almost any peer. But there is one group even the best accumulation machine cannot help: those already old.

For a 55-year-old informal worker, compounding has almost nothing to work with. Even if she enrolled tomorrow and saved faithfully, there would be too few years to bui...