The Goa government has come with a scheme to appoint retired teachers (college and university) as consultants to government projects.
This is a good move to give a new lease of life to retired people whose knowledge and expertise could be captialised by the government.
Perhaps the scheme could be tweaked a bit so that it would benefit more faculties. Instead of appointing retired persons the government can appoint serving teachers in various committees. For their services they could be paid an honorarium. This step would help save a few lakhs for the government. The lectures that the teacher would miss could be taken by teachers on contract.
Secondly, the government could either recruit or call on deputation working teachers. This step would create a vacancy for promotion for other teachers in the college/university.
Let the retired persons take well deserved rest, no one is indispensable! One issue is that the proposed scheme needs retired teachers with a PhD degree!
Time to time the governments have and even now appoint consultants, do they have PhD? It is a matter of debate if a PhD is really an important criterion for work as consultants.
