Age limit for study?

I am sure most of you who did your undergraduation and (post) graduation in India would know about CSIR. For those of you who do not know about it, CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) is an organization that funds and heads many research programs throughout India. They usually conduct an exam for PhD entrance and if you manage to get a good score, you can start your research in a lab of your choice (or probably assigned to you, not sure). This exam is similar to GRE, but more scientific and they don't really bother you with verbals! It is definitely a very competitive exam and is opined to be difficult to pass. Passing is difficult not because the questions are too specific and tricky, but just that though you have nothing to do with evolution and botany, they have this weird rule which expects you to answer questions from these and very many subjects unrelated to you, like Geography!



Having given a brief introduction to what this organization is about and their roles and responsibilities, let me get to my point. By passing a CSIR exam, you get into various schemes as told here. One of those is getting a JRF and then 'maturing' further in an SRF and finishing your finishing your PhD in about 5-6 years (at the end of 5 years of painstaking research and sometimes having loads of professor-given insults to your credits, you would have earned just about Rs.10,000 per month but let's not get into it). My brain totally fails to understand why CSIR poses an age restriction for those people who write their JRF exams. Or should I say an age limit of 70 years makes more sense than 28 years. A SRF has an age limit of 32 years!! What is the logic behind not letting people do a PhD after 28 or 32 years? Their website (above link) reads - Their idea is "Identifying budding talent having aptitude and aspirations". Sadly they think as one gets older he/she lose their capacity to do a PhD. That is being totally insane!



One of my friends lost an oppurtunity to do her doctoral degree only because she was 29. People choose to do a PhD later in life for reasons CSIR unfortunately does not seem to understand - One good reason for girls would be family pressures and for guys, would be low monetary benefit which will easily surpass ones passion. I think CSIR can be sued under social discrimination for not letting somebody write a PhD entrance for a simple reason of being older than 28 years. One of my MS classmates here in the US was 40 and he was planning to get into a school to do a PhD in the next 2 years. That is when research grows. Age cannot be a blockade to scientific thinking. I really wish CSIR changes its (absurd) rules for good.