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by Rajen Kumar
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The Last Word
Time to Turn our Post Offices into Modern Communication Centers
Rajen Kumar
Dec 2010
Dec 2010
We have MNCs from across the globe that have crossed many seas to make India their home. We have industries which have gone global to proudly decorate foreign shelves with their products. A country of nearly 1.2 billion mouths, India today shines as a fast developing economy in the comity of nations. We have joined the coveted race to explore the moon. India has found place in the exclusive club of a very few nuclear powerful nations. Our IT brains, medical and other professionals rule the roost in the international scheme of things.
How come no one has ever thought of our post offices which continue to emote the stink of the bygone century. A visit to the post office, leave out a few in the metros, you will feel rewound to the olden times. It seems the air of progress and new civilization has surpassed our post offices across the country. Is it that we want to preserve our post offices as our heritage working monuments?
Years ago, in Birmingham (UK) when I wanted to fax a document to the airline office, I was directed to a post office which had all the facilities. The post office there was like a modern office equipped with facilities like email, Photostat, fax etc.
In India, when you visit a post office, you are confronted with a few caged personnel sitting on age-old half-broken chairs, paying no attention to you. You make an effort to draw their attention. Even if you want postage stamps of Rs.70/-, in all probability, the man behind the counter will ask you to bring 'change'. When you go to withdraw money from your account, your signatures will never tally. And when you have some enquiry to make, all you get is a half-hearted zestless reply and that too after asking many times.
Our postmen are very intelligent otherwise. When they come to deliver you a registered letter containing a cheque, you will have to shell out some money as 'bakshish'. The fact that our postmen are able to make out the contents of the envelop they deliver is a tribute to their uncanny skills.
Since Independence, the number of post offices increased from 23,344 to 1,55,204. Ours is the largest postal network in the world, with one post office serving 7160 people and covering an area of approximately 21.2 sq. kms. Despite this only 1,37,508 out of 5,95,113 inhabited villages have post offices. If only Gram Panchayat villages are considered, only 1,15,881 of them out of a total of 2,34,755 have post offices (data as per 2007 available figures). What is our ministry of rural development doing?
This huge infrastructure is going waste or underutilized. Why cannot we make our post offices full-fledged reprographic centers equipped with all paraphernalia offering facilities like facsimile, photostat, email facility? The post offices should have wi fi connections facilitating people to use their laptops against payment. The post office can go a step further to have even video conferencing facilities and must be operational till late in the evening making people save on unnecessary logistics and time. The sprawling postal infrastructure can also be used as skill development centers especially in the rural belts still languishing in age-old methodology of all kinds.
We are yet short of banks. Our post offices can as well run small entrepreneurial banking points.
The government can invite private players to manage these centers. Premier institutions like Quality Council of India, National Small Industries Corporation, SIDBI can be entrusted with the task of making blue prints for the development and working of these centers.
Raja’s Rule Everywhere
Our honourable Minister of Communications (now former) A. Raja makes news everywhere and anywhere. Restaurants, bars, hair cutting saloons, paan-shops, clubs, intellectual dens, everywhere Raja is being discussed with gusto. We all take some time to pronounce how much money is allegedly swindled. People shudder to ask “how many zeros in 1 lac seventy six thousand crores” despite the fact that it was our great India which invented zero.
Thanks to our media that another Raja has been discovered in the kingdom of Indian politics. But where do we have no Rajas? There are thousands of Rajas ruling the roost freely in our hundreds of departments run by the government of India; DDA, MCD, Income Tax, Excise, Police, Army, Provident Fund, Banks, LIC and many more. Please remind me if I inadvertently left any.
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