Politicians are considered to be a class apart. Their rise could be self-sustained efforts, familial or party based. However, their stay at the politics and in particular at the helm of affairs is shrouded in a usual question of mandatory retirement posed more often as prominent leaders around the world are getting older. Although many of the world political leaders are currently well beyond the normal retirement age of working class, the discussion rests with the results of an election they contest at their level.
In the United States of America, for example, Americans prefer to work more either as weekly or annual working hours as well as the number of years of life they spend working in spite of the benefits accrued to them by the Government. It can be said that their maturity and expertise is needed and used by establishments and enterprises with mutual benefits. A medical anthropologist and historian from USA has commented that Americans prefer higher wages to reduced working hours when the question of Four Days Week arrives.
Retirement conventions for various occupations around the world have revolved around the advances in manufacturing and computing. It has been observed that many Europeans prefer shorter working hours and longer vacations by and large. As for the formulation of retirement age, it has been pointed out that the convention for a set retirement age came up in the 20th century and was based on the data about life expectancy and societal factors.
Research suggests that remaining active and staying healthy throughout your life will provide you with an age to stay better equipped to work even in a typically volatile environment of politics. However, there are certain natural drawbacks for work due to aging. Whereas incidences of cognitive decline cannot be tolerated in most of the workspaces, certain people are adamant enough to stick through somehow instead of relinquishing.
Coming back to the political arena, it has been held that the toughest question is who decides when to retire? Certain norms may have been prescribed by those who have formatted the policy. However, once you are in position, it is difficult for even any of the insiders to suggest you about the same as the same may boomrang on the insider himself. Any of the discussions on cognitive abilities are shooed and remain grounded.
Maintaining once own stance, dignity and demure seems to be one of the surest ways to quiet any issues of political retirement. The rest is said to be governed by the stars as they say.
Going back once again, Aristotle considers politics as study of communities and gives it a higher priority than morals and beliefs. Politics in India is rooted in human to human framework and gets amalgamated in groups of communities for purpose of placing forward agendas considered non-congenial to other groups.
Just as there could be hardly any family without disturbances aka disputes that need settlements amicably, the groups, states and nations too have and breed inherent disputes and hence are unlikely to remain together. The beauty of such relationships could be observed when certain components sitting on the fence conjure meetings with opposite factions under a disguise of being long time friends.
(The writer is a resident of Surat, Gujarat. Views personal)
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