TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
Time and again in recent years, successive governments and successive chief ministers in Jammu and Kashmir have flirted with the idea of sending on ‘‘forced” retirement or, shall we say, “forced” pre-mature retirement those of the State employees who have seemingly turned into “dead wood” or, in other words, who have turned redundant and worthless like the wood that is left with no fire inside. More often than not, however, the government’s declaration of intent gets thwarted by the influential lot who are capable of pulling enough strings to continue.. no matter whether the wood is dead or alive.
Recently again, a section of press reported the present government’s inclination to get rid of “dead wood”. Such surmises possibly followed the ultimate forced retirement of a few Judges in the State judiciary whose case-file had been pending for several few months.
Years ago, when Ajit Wadekar announced his sudden decision to retire from international cricket as a skipper, he was asked why he was doing so and he quoted his mentor Poly Umrigar who always said “One should retire when people ask why you are retiring and not when people start asking why you are not retiring.”
In the realms of Jammu and Kashmir administration, however, the reverse is the case with even the senior bureaucrats, officers and Heads of departments found inventing new and innovative methods to postpone their date of retirement either by way of an extension in service or re-employment or, if nothing works, then by forging a false Date of Birth Certificate.
George Bernard Shaw once remarked that certain set-ups are such in which the craziest rise to become “Admirals”. Often it is whispered in certain quarters in Jammu and Kashmir that to rise to the topmost position in state hierarchy, one needs to be less competent, more dishonest and most sycophantic. Now, whether these traits are also capable of infusing life in “dead” wood is a question to be answered by the polity presiding over the state hierarchy provided the polity itself is not dead or dying with stigma of scams, land encroachments and cash-for-transfers.
Meanwhile, a curious observation is that those who deserve to be forcibly or voluntarily retired from government often manage never to retire whereas those who apply for voluntary retirement are the ones whose services are needed but they choose to quit the government job because they have the option of better avenues outside government set-up.
Nevertheless, those who inspire the common man are the ones who quit for a higher cause and never look back. Umapathy philosophically but poetically speaks on their behalf ‘‘….Ahl-e-Sahil Ko Humne Pukara Nahin!’’
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