Skip to main content

Retirement Politics


80-year-old men call a meeting of 70-year-old men to decide the retirement age of some 60-year-old people. This is what’s happening in India. My state of Kerala recently raised the retirement age to 60 for people working in the state’s PSUs. There were immediate protests from the Congress which recently elected an 80-year-old man as their president and the BJP which worships a 72-year-old Prime Minister who is all set for another term in the next election when he will be 74.

There is a serious unemployment problem in Kerala and hence hampering the opportunities of the youth for employment by raising the retirement age of existing staff is unjust. That is the argument. But Kerala’s life expectancy is 77 and why should one retire at 56? Instead of asking people to retire, the government should discover/create new job opportunities for the youth.

If politicians can continue to work at the age of 80, why can’t the common man too? Karunanidhi was in office at the age of 87. So was Jyoti Basu. Joe Biden is 79. 91-year-old Rupert Murdoch continues to rule the media. 92-year-old Warren Buffet is the chairperson of Berkshire Hathaway. We can cite umpteen such examples. Kerala’s Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, is 77. A significant number of Kerala’s MLAs are above 70. But when it comes to you and me, these oldies will decide when we should stop working. 


Now the flip side. Quite many of the government employees in Kerala don’t deserve to be in office at all. They have no work to do or they don’t do their work. You go to a government office to get your job done and they will harass you every way possible until you bribe them and their clerks and their peons and their drivers handsomely.

Take the simple case of the state’s government and government-aided schools. These schools hardly have students. There are two such schools in my village: one primary and the other high school. Both together have about 30 students and half as many staff. These staff are paid by the government and they get handsome pay packets. I teach in a school in the nearby town and the school is purely private. The school is funded totally by the fees paid by the students. There are 2300 students and over 100 teachers. It’s an efficient system in spite of the fact that the staff are paid far, far less than their government counterparts.

Why do we need government institutions at all, I often wonder. There’s hardly any work done there. 

Comments

  1. The Moon's BOYFRIEND November 2, 2022 at 2:07 PM

    Money and power... that's all that matter age doesn't stand a chance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2022 at 7:02 PM

      True. This present amendment is made to favour some particular individuals who are close to the CM, I think.

      Mercifully, KSRTC & KSEB Employees are not included. It would have been ridiculous otherwise. They are nothing more than highway thieves.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanNovember 2, 2022 at 5:19 PM

    Hari OM
    In both OZ and UK, retirment age is now 67. It gets moved every upward the closer a certain group of us (ie me and thee and such) get to it. Meaning that official retirement - and therefore pension - will never arrive. I am retired on a very small, but adequate (so far) private pension which is unlikely to last as long as I do. What will the government do with me then, if they have shifted the goalposts as to the pension I paid taxes for all those years and they don't want to give me... Will the youth they want to put in jobs be willing to pay for my food and board? All governments currently focused on 'growth economics' ignore their elderly - unless those elderly have money and power. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2022 at 7:07 PM

      India pampers its government employees with good salaries as well as pensions. Private sector employees slog all life, get a pittance for wages, and are excluded from any worthwhile pension scheme. We have a terribly discriminatory system. But who cares? Those who have the power to care are the beneficiaries of the existing system, so they won't change it.

      Delete
  3. Sonia DograNovember 2, 2022 at 9:19 PM

    You have a point about politicians staying in their jobs even at 90! Unjust. Absolutely. Honestly we need to work on our population if we must resolve these issues. All other solutions will only be temporary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 3, 2022 at 6:33 AM

      Our politicians must change, I feel, for greater changes to happen. People are helpless without a leader. Our current leaders are all self-centered people.

      Delete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathNovember 4, 2022 at 11:53 AM

    A very interesting and engaging post on the subject! It is business as usual for the average citizen. Policies will not change in line with their needs or welfare but interests of those in power.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2022 at 2:55 PM

      And now the pension rule is revoked! Why doesn't our government think before it announces policies? You're right, the ordinary citizen just has to go on.

      Delete
  5. Voice from the roof topNovember 4, 2022 at 5:29 PM

    Good thought

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...
34 comments
Read more