A matter of age

If politicians and judges are so bothered about promotions or excellent work, why not increase the retirement age?

Politicians and judges are up in arms and, for a change, find themselves mostly on the same side. Retired civil servants who get rehired by the government are their targets. The politicians are attempting to pass laws making it impossible to rehire them, while the judges are going one better, they are throwing those rehired out on their ears.

Exactly why both of them should have their knickers in a twist if some superannuated civil servants retain government jobs is baffling. To begin with, there are not that many of them. Secondly, they are being rehired because the government of the day considers them necessary for the task at hand.

Of course, not all retired civil servants deserve to be rehired, but then not all politicians deserve to be re-elected or judges given extensions, but no one has sought a law forbidding that.

If politicians and judges are so bothered about clearing promotion blockages or wanting excellence in service, why not increase the age of retirement; and why don’t the judges take a closer look at the havoc the politicians have caused by abusing promotion, postings and the selection process in general? For that matter, why not revert to recruitment on the basis of merit and scrap that spurious and so-called ‘necessary evil’, the quota system?

Politicians have no retiring age, while senior judges have been given the right to sit on the ‘bench’ or rather on expensively padded and ornate chairs refurbished regularly at the taxpayers’ expense, till they reach the age of 65. Nor can they be removed, not even by an act of parliament, except if they are impeached or are in breach of decorum. This happens all the while corruption in the lower judiciary is rife and cases are endlessly delayed due to dilatory procedures that court rules seemingly permit.

In any case, discarding human beings solely on account of their age makes no sense in today’s world. Why throw an individual on the scrap heap and expect him to imagine he is on a prolonged holiday? Why should he necessarily retire even when his services are needed? Pakistan may have a surfeit of talent but, as our history proves, we do not have an excess of experience and wisdom. So, when someone with these qualities comes along, why throw him out of office merely because of his age that has been arbitrarily fixed and altered? It started at 55 and was later raised to 58, before being lowered to 57 and then raised to 60; some are now canvassing for 58.

In fact, neither physical performance nor stamina necessarily diminishes with age, while wisdom mostly grows as men get older. Clemenceau, Churchill, de Gaulle, Jinnah, Gandhi, Mao, Ho Chi Minh led their nations in war when they were relatively old or well over 60, and they absorbed more physical and mental stress than men half their age would probably have endured.

In some European countries, like Holland, people forced to retire on account of age have gone to court and won lawsuits on grounds of discrimination on the basis of their age and hence denial of their human rights. It is time we, too, began to grapple with this outmoded concept and took a fresh look at the actuality of retirement. We also need to do it because eventually the pension bill — as people are beginning to live longer — will become unbearable.

In Pakistan today, because of the deplorable state of public education, administrative and professional expertise is becoming woefully short. And this is happening while people’s expectations about governance are rising and their patience wearing thin. The generational change, partly because government service is no longer as attractive as it was once, is accentuating the problem. Using retired people is a good way of bridging that gap. And if, on occasion, the person rehired is blatantly unsuited for the task, he or she should be exposed and the error should be corrected.

So what’s the big deal? Why put to waste rather than make good use of the reservoir we have? Of course, we need to tap it selectively. We now have, given the generational change, quite a lot to choose from, unlike say 20 years ago. In other words, this is hardly the right time to stiff-arm people simply because they are older than 60.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2011.