We are an old country but a young democracy - perhaps a little too young for our age. But you cannot say that of the people who rule over us - I mean the politicians and babus - most of whom are close to sixty and some nearing eighty.
This is not so in other countries, what strikes you the most in places like London and Washington is the great speed at which people, even elderly people, move. This was so even fifty years ago, when I was visiting London for the first time, though most of us still suffered from post war trauma.
Now leaders are getting younger, not older. Instead of Winston Churchill with his shuffling walk, you have Tony Blair, who looks more like his son and in half Churchill's age. George W. Bush took over as president of the most powerful nation in the world when he was around fifty and looked younger. Bill Clinton was actually in his forties when he became president.
In India, age is a great qualification for leadership. Nehru became PM when he was 58, precisely the age when government servants retire in India. But somehow Nehru always remained young even after he had crossed seventy. I remember how young and sprightly most of the labour party leaders were in England when they assumed power in 1945, immediately after the last war. Harold Wilson, who became the equivalent of our commerce minister, was only 32, which is the kind of age at which we start our political careers in India as municipal corporators. Wilson later became prime minister, as most of them did, when he was still in his fifties.
I had gone to interview Wilson in his office along with another Indian journalist, and simply could not believe that the man sitting at the big table was actually a minister of the crown. He looked more like a personal assistant or stenographer.
As we were rather late for the meeting, and Wilson had some work in the parliament, he said we could talk on the way to the House of Commons. I was expecting a car to pick us up but we actually walked to the Common, with Wilson replying to our questions as we went up the Whitehall. Things were very informal then and there was no security worth the name. Some ministers actually travelled in buses.
Youth is almost an obsession in America. Everybody wants to be younger than the next man, or woman. Businessmen, as they go up the ladder, shed their old wives along with their old cars, and acquire young damsels, usually their secretaries, half their age. So do American politicians, though they have to be discreet about it. John F. Kennedy's White House looked more like Hollywood, which actually made him as popular as a film star.
One reason why things are so slow in the public sector in India is that the people who run it are so old. Visit any ministry in Delhi, with its ancient furniture and even more ancient babes, and then immediately make for an office of any company in the private sector, and the difference hits you in the eye. One often wonders how any work gets done in such government or quasi-government office until you realise that at the end of the day, very little work gets done, and nobody bothers. I am not saying that youth is everything, but in these times when everything seems to be on the move, and that too at electronic speeds, youth always scores on age, which is one reason why IT has done so well in such a short time. Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been a ministry of information technology with someone like Arjun Singh heading it?
This article was originally published on August 02, 2007.
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