Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Mails may dip but India’s postmen will go on

Dear Comrades,

The postman’s knock on sleepy afternoons was an event of some importance in Indian towns not long ago. It meant that either a money order or a registered post had arrived. Since the advent of the electronic age, however, the importance of the world’s most widely distributed postal service with more than 1,50,000 post offices has declined. Seeing how e-mails and the private courier services were making inroads into the 324-year-old postal business, Indian Post introduced innovations like the speed post, e-payments of telephone, electricity and other bills, and even spruced up some of the post offices, which used to have the typically cheerless ambience of public sector organisations. But, the decline has continued.

It is just as well, therefore, that the authorities have decided to use postal employees for various other services, including data collection from small shops to help in the compilation of figures relating to inflation. Since post offices were not only engaged in sending and receiving letters and parcels, but also acted as banks and provided financial services such as savings schemes like the public provident fund and the vikas patras, the employees are well versed in various occupations — all of them calling for meticulousness and integrity.If they now take up other duties as well along with the existing ones, the services will acquire a fresh lease of life and perhaps even relive periods when the postal department scored several firsts. These included setting up the highest post office in the world at 15,500 feet in Himachal Pradesh, flying the first airmail service on February 18, 1911, and establishing the first floating post office on the Dal Lake in Srinagar. The dakiya is the descendant of the ‘runner’, who carried mail from town to town through the night braving thugs and wild animals in the days before the railway network was well established. Since then, his life has improved — and may improve further as his worth is realised.
 
http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/editorials/mails-may-dip-but-india%E2%80%99s-postmen-will-go-on/367609.html
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