Bureaucracy is by definition precedent-driven and rule-bound. Hence, by training and as professionals, bureaucrats develop life-long expertise in being rule-bound and precedent-driven. Bureaucrats are sometimes unfairly criticized for these very qualities which are pre-requisites for success in their profession. It is like blaming the horse for being obedient to the rules of riding. Yet Indian bureaucracy has learned to be innovative and go beyond these limitations to serve the common man.
I have had the good fortune to have worked with forward-thinking senior bureaucrats and idealistic new entrants to the civil services who went the extra mile in ensuring that the common man benefitted from their services. That is after all the very purpose of bureaucracy. As an ex-bureaucrat and a senior citizen, I have tried to balance these traits which have been inbuilt into my personality through these long years.
Bureaucrats sometimes practise the art of obfuscation, which Wikipedia defines as "Obfuscation is the obscuring of intended meaning in communication, making the message confusing, willfully ambiguous, or harder to understand". In simple terms, we sometimes like to use many words where a few will suffice.
So retirement, is described as superannuation. The point being to upgrade retirement as being in the super category. In perhaps a different sense,no doubt,retirement is in a category of it's own,which is difficult to describe unless one goes through it actually.Now all that is well and fine, but after retirement, rather superannuation, ex-bureaucrats' circle of captive listeners progressively diminishes. In this vastly reduced circle , the patience of our listeners is strictly limited to meaningful and relevant conversation, not confined by the preamble " When I was ......." . In such circumstances, conversation topics become severely limited,with the listeners melting away quickly,unless we have something meaningful and socially relevant to contribute. As senior citizens, we need to enlarge our horizons and make ourselves interesting to society,and more importantly, give back to society in whatever way we can. They rightly say that we live and learn-and I am constantly learning positively how many of our ex-colleagues and senior and junior ex- bureaucrats, are doing their bit for socially responsible projects. This must be giving them a deep sense of inner satisfaction .
Mohinder Pal Singh
(Author retired from the Central services)
I have had the good fortune to have worked with forward-thinking senior bureaucrats and idealistic new entrants to the civil services who went the extra mile in ensuring that the common man benefitted from their services. That is after all the very purpose of bureaucracy. As an ex-bureaucrat and a senior citizen, I have tried to balance these traits which have been inbuilt into my personality through these long years.
Bureaucrats sometimes practise the art of obfuscation, which Wikipedia defines as "Obfuscation is the obscuring of intended meaning in communication, making the message confusing, willfully ambiguous, or harder to understand". In simple terms, we sometimes like to use many words where a few will suffice.
So retirement, is described as superannuation. The point being to upgrade retirement as being in the super category. In perhaps a different sense,no doubt,retirement is in a category of it's own,which is difficult to describe unless one goes through it actually.Now all that is well and fine, but after retirement, rather superannuation, ex-bureaucrats' circle of captive listeners progressively diminishes. In this vastly reduced circle , the patience of our listeners is strictly limited to meaningful and relevant conversation, not confined by the preamble " When I was ......." . In such circumstances, conversation topics become severely limited,with the listeners melting away quickly,unless we have something meaningful and socially relevant to contribute. As senior citizens, we need to enlarge our horizons and make ourselves interesting to society,and more importantly, give back to society in whatever way we can. They rightly say that we live and learn-and I am constantly learning positively how many of our ex-colleagues and senior and junior ex- bureaucrats, are doing their bit for socially responsible projects. This must be giving them a deep sense of inner satisfaction .
Mohinder Pal Singh
(Author retired from the Central services)
Comments
The result was a half written book.
I am reproducing the first chapter of the proposed book.....
Life begins at retirement.
Author Unknown
Concept of Retirement
Have you ever wondered why we have an age of retirement?
Who fixed it? What are the reasons for selection of any particular age? And why should you not choose your own time of retirement?
History
The concept of retirement at a particular age is relatively new.
Traditionally, most people worked till death, or till they became physically incapable of working any longer.
As our societies became more and more complex, guilds, or organisations comprising of craftsmen and merchants, grew up. The earliest guilds were formed in Europe during the 16th century. These guilds regulated production and employment and also provided a range of benefits, including financial help to their members - in times of poverty, illness, death and other emergencies.
Introduction of the Age of Retirement (Germany)
In 1889, Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of Germany, introduced the world’s first social security scheme to attract the German working class and counter the power of the Socialist Party in Germany.
Otto von Bismarck arbitrarily picked the age of retirement as 70. There was no rhyme or reason for his selection. But this was an extremely wise move.
The program did not really cost the Government anything, because in those days, most German workers never lived to the age of even 65.
Some writers have erroneously written that U.S. adopted the age of 65 as the age for its retirement benefits based on Bismarck’s selection of the age of 65 years, which he (Bismarck) had selected because he was 65 years old at the time of the selection.
But Bismarck was actually 74 at the time of selection of the age of retirement and he had actually selected the retirement age of 70 (and not 65 years).
Only in 1916 (27 years after the selection by Bismarck), Germany lowered the age of retirement to 65. By this time, Bismarck had been dead for 18 years.
Social Security Act of 1935 (U.S.)
In the U.S., President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the Social Security Act on 14 August, 1935 (55 years after Otto von Bismarck, the German Chancellor, had introduced it in Germany), to meet the economic problems caused by the Great Depression.