Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili
Across societies, a familiar phenomenon is increasingly visible. The day an officer retires from government service, a new public personality often emerges. Former bureaucrats, administrators, technocrats, regulators, and policy makers suddenly become active participants in civil society forums, environmental trusts, citizens’ groups, mosque committees, heritage forums, advocacy platforms, and public campaigns. They write articles. They address seminars. They issue statements. They lead delegations. They meet political leaders. They organise conferences. They advocate reforms. At one level, this is welcome. Experience should not retire. Wisdom should not be wasted. Institutional memory can benefit society. Many retired officials possess valuable insights that younger generations can learn from. Yet an uncomfortable question often arises in the mind of the ordinary citizen:
Why Now? The question is not born of hostility. It emerges from curiosity and, at times, frustration. The same individuals who now speak passionately about environmental degradation, traffic chaos, urban mismanagement, disappearing wetlands, governance deficits, institutional decay, corruption, youth alienation, and civic responsibility were once part of the very system responsible for addressing these issues. Many occupied positions of authority and had access to decision-making corridors unavailable to ordinary citizens. Naturally, people wonder why concerns that are highlighted so prominently today did not receive the same public urgency when these individuals were still in office. These questions may appear harsh, but they are legitimate. To be fair, governance is rarely simple. Bureaucrats operate within political realities, administrative constraints, competing priorities, legal limitations, and institutional pressures.
Decisions are often shaped by circumstances beyond an individual’s control. No honest observer can deny this reality. However, acknowledging constraints does not eliminate accountability. The public understands that no officer can change an entire system alone. What many struggle to understand is the sudden transformation from institutional silence to public activism immediately after retirement. The answers differ from individual to individual. Many retired officers genuinely wish to contribute. Having spent decades inside institutions, they understand systemic weaknesses and seek to help society avoid repeating mistakes. Such contributions deserve appreciation. But there is another category that society also recognises. The transition from bureaucrat to activist sometimes appears less like public service and more like a continuation of public visibility. The designation changes, but the habit remains.
Years spent as chief guests, keynote speakers, inaugural dignitaries, guests of honour, ribbon-cutters, and media commentators create habits that do not easily disappear. Human beings naturally seek recognition. Retirement often removes institutional authority overnight. The telephone rings less frequently. Invitations decline. Public attention shifts elsewhere. For some individuals, advocacy platforms become a new avenue through which relevance is preserved. This does not necessarily make their concerns invalid. But it does raise questions about motivation and outcomes. Modern civil society suffers from a growing addiction to optics. Meetings are organised. Panels are constituted. Resolutions are passed. Photographs are circulated. Press statements are issued. Social media celebrates engagement. Everyone appears active, yet the issue itself often remains unchanged. Environmental degradation continues. Traffic worsens. Drug abuse expands. Public health challenges persist. Institutional dysfunction survives. The activity is visible. The impact is not. This is where ordinary citizens begin losing trust. They observe a recurring pattern: a concern is identified, a seminar is organised, experts speak, recommendations are made, and a press release follows.
“The public does not want silence; it demands consistency. Officers should apply the same passion to executing practical solutions as they do to criticizing or lecturing.”
Too often, there is little monitoring, follow-up, or measurable outcome.
The concern ends where the seminar ends. This phenomenon is not confined to retired bureaucrats alone. Civil society groups, NGOs, professional bodies, advocacy platforms, and public-interest organisations often fall into the same trap. Discussion becomes a substitute for action, and visibility a substitute for impact. The ordinary citizen, meanwhile, watches silently. He sees roads deteriorate despite conferences on infrastructure, water bodies shrink despite environmental campaigns, and social problems worsen despite endless public discussions. Eventually, he begins questioning whether the objective is solving problems or managing perceptions.
Another concern emerges when advocacy becomes selective. Certain issues receive extraordinary attention, while others remain ignored. Some causes become fashionable. Others remain inconvenient. The result is a hierarchy of concern driven not by public need but by public visibility. Citizens notice these inconsistencies. The credibility of any public platform ultimately depends upon consistency. People may disagree with a viewpoint, but they respect sincerity. What they find difficult to respect is selective outrage. The challenge, therefore, is not whether retired officers should participate in public life. They absolutely should. Society benefits when experience contributes to public discourse. The real question is how that participation should occur.
The answer lies in humility, introspection, and measurable action. The most credible retired public servant is not the one who speaks most loudly. It is the one who openly acknowledges institutional limitations, reflects honestly on missed opportunities, and uses experience to create practical solutions. Similarly, the most credible advocacy platform is not the one issuing the greatest number of statements. It is the one capable of demonstrating measurable outcomes. How many recommendations became policy? How many initiatives succeeded? How many lives changed? These questions matter far more than attendance figures, photographs, or newspaper coverage. A healthy society requires less performance and more persistence, less symbolism and more substance and less visibility and more accountability.
The true test of concern begins after the cameras leave, the speeches conclude, and the social media applause fades. That is where public service starts. Retirement can indeed become a second innings of meaningful service. But it should not become a theatre of relevance. Society does not need more seminars that end in press releases. It needs initiatives that end in results. The public is not asking retired officers to remain silent. It is asking them to be consistent to bring the same passion to implementation that they bring to advocacy, to demonstrate through action what they now articulate through speeches, to convert experience into solutions rather than visibility. For ultimately, the measure of public service is neither the office one held nor the platform one occupies after retirement. It is whether one’s efforts leave society better than one found it. Everything else is optics.
( The author is a distinguished clinical auditor and an expert in healthcare data analysis. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
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