Out of a total of 992 households surveyed in four villages and four urban localities of Dharwad taluk, theprevalence of elderly ranged between six to eight percent in rural area and more than 10 percent with a range of 11-21 inurban. Further, a sample of 154 elderly with 86 from rural and 68 from urban were assessed for physical and mental health,depression, life satisfaction, self esteem and activities of daily living (ADL) using standard measures. It was observed that43 per cent of elderly had poor mental health, 20 percent had low level of life satisfaction and 15 percent had mild / moderatelevel of depression and five per cent had low self esteem and 20 per cent were mildly impaired on activities of daily living(ADL). Urban elderly had significantly more health problems but better mental health than rural elderly. The male elderlyhad significantly better mental health than female elderly. There was positive and significant association between lifesatisfaction and gender among elderly where in female elderly were significantly lower than men elderly on life satisfaction.Marital status was associated with life satisfaction. So an intervention programme was designed for rural elderly and aneducational package was developed for urban group. The programme focused on ‘Active Ageing’, a process of optimizingopportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age through innovativeintervention strategies within the context of friends, work associates, neighbors and family members. Another cohort witha sample of 145 elderly was selected from two villages. The physical and mental health, social support, life satisfaction andactivities of daily living (ADL) were pre-tested. No association was found between mental health, life satisfaction, ADL,with age, gender and caste and socio economic status (SES) indicating that they were more or less similar with a highpercentage in low levels on all the dependent variables. An intervention of four months with two sessions per week, a totalof 21 sessions was imparted to 145 elderly in two villages. About 65 elderly attended all the sessions. The programmecontent was Personality changes, life satisfaction, anger management, ego, health (osteoporosis, foot care mud treatmentetc), nutrition, importance of drinking water, food habits-diet and meal pattern, festival and its relevance and sharing lifeexperiences , preparation for death which were deliberated through stories, slide, film shows and discussions. Exercises,productive and recreational activities were also conducted. The post testing indicated that the mental health and lifesatisfaction was found to be significantly better among both gender. Thus the programme was effective in targeting the threecardinal aspects of happy aging - physical and mental health, good adjustment and life satisfaction. Therefore, it is essentialto establish day care centres with community participation for making old age a happy period.