Postal Services: Needs More Attention :: On World Post Day 09 October 2012

Ravi Nitesh *

Gol Dak Khana, New Delhi :: Pix - Ravi Nitesh

Receiving a letter, looking for the postman, was the experience that certainly enjoyed by all people before our generations. Regardless of rural and urban portfolios, people of all types and of all class used to share the same feeling and same happiness decades ago on arrival of postman in their area.

Those who were illiterate used to go to a person who can read the letter for them. These all things have its several impact and effect on social structure. At many times, these things helped people to form a bond, to provide easier communication, social bonding and to make a society in its real mean.

We experienced a sudden change after the revolution made in virtual world of internet. Gradually in a decade, we forget those 'khaki' wearing cycle riders. From the most demanded person to the least important man, they witnessed it on themselves. Still many of those who are using internet frequently for communication purpose, can remember the days when they wrote essay on 'The Postman".

India Post has updated itself with the time, but in competition with courier services, our postal services lagged. Are the postal services not competent with other mode of physical transfer of letters/articles/goods such as couriers? Still lot of post offices in India is famous for their architecture. These have become antique piece where people sometimes really visit to see it. We can see the grand building, high roofs, old styled fans, a special smell, lot of old files, old styled furnitures….and yes, many slow hands and old faces. Customers also complaint about irritating behavior of post office personals.

Though, in fact India Post also tried a lot to update itself with times and in fact brought lot of new things that can be count for speed and value for money but in spite of this it is loosing the charm.

On analyzing the reasons, we can find that this decrease is not just due to launch of internet, but also due to lack in efforts of postal services in the most required awareness programs in creative ways.

It is World post Day today, that is celebrated on anniversary of Universal Postal Union (1874). It was declared as World post Day in 1969 with the purpose to create awareness of the role of postal services in everyday lives and in socio economic development of a country.

For India, postal services are still so relevant because still most of the Indian population lives in rural areas, urban areas also have not received support of frequent internet connections, lack of electricity and many such reasons push the India post to make its services better. In approx 1,54, 866 post offices of India, 1.39,040 are situated in rural areas as per Annual report of India Post. With this large network, Indian Postal services are placed with world's largest network. To make its services better and speedy, government has provisioned to make all post offices IT (information technology) enabled. In this 12th Five year plan, these services will be made fully equipped at all post offices.

To help the upliftment of social schemes, government has collaborated the post offices with many schemes so that people can get benefit with this largest network. Wages of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guranatee Scheme also distributed through post offices in various circles. National Postal Policy also launched in Feb 2012. Even a special course of Gramin Dak Sevak' launched by the government under NIOS.

With these upgradation, we can hope for the betterment of this service in future. As, its betterment will be effective in uplifting socio economic condition of society and the already built large network can be helpful in many more services.

We though are not dependent on postal services for our general communication, but still we can have the best way to send articles through post. On the occasion of World Post Day, we can live a moment when we can write a letter and can post.