Post offices — anachronism in Digital India

Across a few dusty wooden counters in a shabby room sit a dour-faced clerks. On the other side of the counters stand queues of men and women, young, middle-aged and old, with varying degrees of impatience. A couple of fans move languidly overhead in a vain struggle to battle the rising heat and humidity in the room. Tempers are easily frayed as the customers try to lean on the counters and transfer their weight from one leg to another waiting for their turn. Walking out for a breadth of fresh air is not an option since one might lose his place in the queue.

Some have come for withdrawing cash from their Monthly Income Schemes while some are waiting for submitting NSC or KVP that have matured and a few need to buy postal orders for appearing in examinations. Beyond the counters heaps of documents and forms sit on tables, apparently collecting dust for weeks. At times an expressionless face of the clerk looks up from behind the counter to inform the customers of “link failure” of the computer, triggering audible sighs and sometimes expletives under the breath. The patient wait for more than an hour turns fruitless and one has to return later in the day, or worse, tomorrow when one again has to wait in a typically narrow stretch rendered narrower by several agents who sit on a wooden bench resting a briefcase on their lap.

Welcome to the average Indian post office where the look and feel seem to have hardly moved beyond the command era economy.

In a country that is trying to leap into the world of digital transaction, the post office is an anachronism. Time here stands still, in more than one sense.

Incidentally, there is no service in the country, not even the railways, that can boast of a richer heritage than the postal system.

First, the size. There are more than 1.55 lakh post offices in the country that makes it one of the largest networks in the world.

But the history of the postal system is more interesting.

On April 16, 1853, the first train carrying passengers ran between Bori Bunder (later Bombay) and Thane which was 34 km away. The first post offices in the country were set up by the British in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras almost 90 years before the first train ran.

The post offices were thrown open for the service of the people by governor general Warren Hastings in March 1774, approximately at the same time when James Watt was inventing his steam engine in England.

The Post Office Act of 1837 gave the government the exclusive right to send letters to the territory of East India Company. After the authority to rule India passed to the Crown in 1858, the monopoly naturally went to the Raj. In the subsequent the postal department has been as much a part of nation building as the railways, integrated steel plants, power plants, dams and institutes of higher education.

|Right now, with both technological leaps rendering many postal services – sale of stamps, envelopes, inland letters, postcards and money orders – obsolete, and private sector courier players eroding its income from parcels severely, the postal department is in a sorry state.

Like most PSUs, it is burdened with a dwindling revenue and an unsustainable workforce who are dependent on budgetary support for their salaries a dwindling revenue.

But then India Post has a history that needs to be told. The young generation most know that the post office need not get left behind in the evolution of technology as the country gets more impatient to break from its brick-and-mortar past.

Any modern society should try to preserve the services that shaped its present and India Post should rank high up in that consideration. While the government should reimagine post offices to suit the idea of digital India, it must explore the idea of selling souvenirs like stationery items, decorative pieces, tee shirts and similar items all over the world. It would add to the pride that is India apart from generating a small revenue.

But first they should begin by painting the post offices, adding a few fans and making the wait a bit tolerable, especially for the elders.