A retirement age for people in power???

The other day I was attending this talk by renowned sociologist Andre Beteille[1] and was extremely excited at the prospect of being part of that lecture. Just when we arrived at the venue, we were told that there might be a slight delay because the Governor of Karnataka, Mr. Rameshwar Thakur[2] had decided to attend as well and he would be presiding as the Chief Guest. Like all VIP attendees, the organisers expected him to be late for the function & true to tradition, he not only came in late but also took a great deal of time in settling in and delivering his lecture due to which the subsequent lecture by Prof Beteille had to be considerably shorter than the original version and he had to rush through it. I really did not enjoy the lecture as much as I would have liked to enjoy it.

Naturally the blame fell on the Governor for being the prime reason of that delay. And while I don’t completely disagree with that view-point, his fragility and health or lack of it did make me think about the topic at hand i.e. should there be a retirement age for leaders who are in positions of power especially within the ambit of the legislature and executive. My experiences with people who have held such positions in the past and have now retired lead me to believe that indeed that should be the case. Coming back to the instance which I narrated above, when the program was getting delayed due the late arrival of the Governor, initially there was a palpable sense of anger amongst the audience; however when he actually arrived, that sense of anger quickly changed to one of pity seeing the way Mr. Thakur was struggling to walk or even the way he was struggling for words. It clearly indicated that he was well past his prime and not in a position to govern a state.

A similar case in point was experienced when I had the opportunity to work with a retired senior Supreme Court Judge who was in his seventies. Prior to working with him, I often wondered that considering the paucity of judges in India, why doesn’t the government extend the retirement age for serving judges. (The retirement age for SC judges is 65 and that of HC judges is 60). However after working with this particular judge I came to realise that issues are obviously not that simple and there is logic to the reason. In the case of this judge, when the entire team was deliberating on decisions to be taken, we found that the time taken by him to respond or even comprehend parts of the issues was quite long and not reflective of the facts presented before him.

It has been well established that as we age (sixties to seventies onwards), our abilities especially mental faculties tend to become less acute and this certainly affects the quality of the decisions that we make. The thought of a judge in his/her seventies taking decisions which could affect the lives of defendants is extremely scary. Also I do not have the confidence that politicians in that age group would be in a position to take rational decisions for the country. (This is of course not to say that young politicians make good decisions) Thus, there should be an upper limit regarding the retirement age for people in positions of power and that is the end of that.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_B%C3%A9teille

[2] http://orissagov.nic.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/dec2004/englishPdf/biodataoframeshwarthakur.pdf