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Re-employing superannuated judges

The editorial “Judges for life” critically evaluates the benefits that our country can have by raising the retirement age of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts.

These benefits can be in the form of professional wisdom or in clearing expeditiously the backlog of pending court cases. But we have to honestly accept that ageing does have detrimental effects on the physical capabilities of human beings.

So, the best option is to appoint these superannuated judges on the positions where their professional wisdom can be utilised such as assigning them the role of an emeritus judge, thus guiding us with their invaluable inputs from time to time. Resultantly, we can impart our judicial system a healthy mix of speed and efficiency.

KULWINDER SINGH, Chandigarh

In fact, access to modern information and communication technology has made recording not only easy but also necessary. There is a popular demand that the Senate should rather take a decision to make a provision for the audio-visual recording so that the remote constituencies of Panjab University could also benefit by having access to recorded CDs of the proceedings. The details of the previous Senate meetings that have been held back should be immediately released to the Fellows and other constituencies of the university.

MANJIT SINGH, Professor, Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh

Population control

The article, “Don’t marry them early, let them bloom” (July 10), by Dr. Rajeshwari is self-explanatory inasmuch as it warns against the ominous consequences of early marriage before 18 years of age. There has been little impact of the family control measures after the Emergency of 1975, which sadly was coercive.

If our government feels shy of creating awareness through personal contacts with village illiterate women, all it can do equally effectively is to prod the panchayats to stop marriages of youngsters below 18 years of age and if persuasion prevails, childbirth should be after 24 years of women’s age.

Although no one can stop people from marrying their children when they are above 18 years of age as per the Constitution, it is the duty of the government to go in for late child-birth. This will automatically help in population control, which is the need of the hour.

GURMIT SINGH SAINI, Mohali

Being a teetotaller The middle, “The travails of a teetotaller” (July 10), by Vivek Atray summarises the dilemma of a person given to temperance. In fact, these seemed to be my own travails. Living in Punjab and being a teetotaller and that too a vegetarian makes a social outcast of an otherwise well-meaning person. The origin of the word “teetotal” came from the stammering Dicky Turner, who declared in 1832 at the meeting of the Prestone Temperance Society that nothing would do but “tee-tee-total abstinence”. The origin of the word could be humorous but practising teetotalism is a serious business altogether. You feel awkward sitting in a party with a glass of soft drink in your hand while your pals might be enjoying the best of scotch. I myself being a teetotaller have faced many serious situations at parties, where I have been jeered by my friends to grow up. However, on seeing their state of mind and body on being drunk, I only renew my pledge to remain a teetotaller. Wine has been promoted as being “soma rasa”, consumed even by the gods. But in my view, it is better if we could remain a better human being than to denigrate ourselves in the quest for some higher pleasures by intoxicating the mind. There are better ways of realising the self than to be in an inebriated state. I on my part get inspiration from the couplet, “Jo maikhane jaa ke main saagar uthaoon, to phir yeh nashili nazar kis liye hai?”  BHUSHAN CHANDER JINDAL, Jalandhar