World Post Day: India Post's survival plan in e-mail riot

In a city like Mumbai post offices now exist like mysterious relics for the netsavvy and emailenabled citizen He looks at its counters often dark to wonder about the bygone era and ponder about times before the Internet This trip of nostalgia often leads to two questions Who writes letters these days And what goes on in post offices To seek an answer to these and similar questions we headed to the Mumbairsquos General Post Office GPO on the eve of the World Post Day on October 9An overview of the main hall of the General Post Office from the second floor Pic Bipin KokateIt perhaps is not an exaggeration to say that one is transported to a different world when one steps out of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus CST to head to the domeheaded GPO Majestic buildings with colonial air including the station inform us about the cityrsquos past that merges into the present to not just stand as sites of heritage but functional centres of important activityThe GPO is one such centre that recently completed a hundred years But this fact added with notions of a dying postal service somehow led us to believe that we are perhaps visiting a museum But as we crossed rows of people typing vigorously at their computers and others busy with huge sacks of envelopes sorting stamping shifting things certainly did not to match up to notions What is all this work for ldquo60 percent of our revenue is now generated from banking and insurancerdquo Ashok Kumar Dash the chief postmaster general explained ldquoThe other 40 percent is from traditional mail which includes money order and even parcelsrdquoAbove The grand old lift that greets visitors at the main entrance of General Post Office at CST top letters being sorted according to destination PICSAtul kambleLetter of approvalSo is the postal system dying Dash dismisses the thought lightly He pointed out that with cities and smaller centres developing there is a higher need for commercial and other posts to be sent to erstwhile less busy areas ldquoSo the postal system has to grow in manpower and size Though not as exponentially as till the 1980sChief postmaster general AK Dash speaks with middayBut it is still growingrdquo He however agreed that the messengers of personal letters the envelopes postcards and inland letters are getting phased out But he pointed out that rural India still writes letters Handwritten letters now pass a lot from village to village Though phasing out the presence is still staggeringA postal employee busy at workldquoThe business is still in crores It is after all the cheapest mode of communicationrdquo he reminds us But he was sure that the future of the post and its greatest push is in partnership with ecommerce ldquoThe Indian postal system is the largest in the world and with this system we plan to make a robust partnership in the ecommerce worldrdquo This vast network is in fact being considered for moreVistors at a postal exhibition organised by the GPO PicBipin KokateBank on usIn August this year RBI granted payment bank license to India Post which means apart from the savings schemes post office accounts can also be used to make payments But even before that there was largescale modernisation going on in the banking part of post officesA view of GPOs architecture designed by John Begg and completed in 1913ldquoThe department has already rolled out Core Banking Solution across 622 locations in Maharashtra and 11 ATMs have already been installed in Maharashtrardquo Dash says India Post is also undergoing an IT modernization project that aims to connect all post offices across the country and this year the theme of celebration of World Post Day and National Postal Week is Digital India PostSlots for letters to different cities at the main entranceThough it has evidently not hurt the postal system every person at the GPO batted for the dying art of writing letters ldquoNothing can replace the personal touch of a handwritten letter It carries your identity Many European countries are taking different initiatives to revive this artrdquo an official in charge of the traditional mails section said He informed that to revive this art India Post takes initiatives like conducting letterwriting events for children We left with the feeling that though not threatened by the takeover of emails and messaging the postal world wants us to write letters perhaps for the pleasure of itInside view of the GPORs 5Cost of an envelopeRs 250Cost of an inland letter50pCost of a post cardAbout October 9gtgt United Nations World Post Day falls on October 9gtgt 150 countries observe the daygtgt The day was first declared in 1969 at Universal Postal Union in Tokyo