Dear Comrades,
Postal Policy
CHALLENGING COURIERS
By Proloy Bagchi
New Delhi, Feb 29 : The Indian postal system was in
the news recently for something that appeared to be a little more
positive. The Minister of Communications and IT, Kapil Sibal, is
reported to have turned his focus on India Post, a department that also
happens to be in his charge. He has done so none too soon though, as the
department seems to have been sliding downhill rather rapidly despite
vigorous efforts made by one of his predecessors Jyotiraditya Scindia,
to modernise post offices and introduce into them Information
Technology.
Starting from scratch, rejecting the departmental logo and
introducing a new one, he devised Project Arrow under which hundreds of
post offices were done-up and computerised with a view to improving mail
delivery, banking and other services. Soon, the department bagged in
2010 the PM’s award for excellence in public administration. However,
the parameters on which the department was adjudged for the award are
not known as the improvement that was sought to be brought about in the
quality of service largely remained unachieved. Scindia was taken off
the ministry even as the Project initiated by him was in the process of
implementation. And, therefore, as normally happens in Government, it
lost steam.
Now Sibal is talking of a national postal policy which, apparently,
will spearhead action to “take on” the couriers and to introduce in the
more-than-a-century-old Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) most of the
banking operations that are carried out by regular banks. While
bestowing on POSB the status of a regular bank will have to be decided
upon in consultations with several other departments of Government of
India and its agencies, action to meet the challenge posed by private
couriers will need to be stepped up by none other than India Post.
At the outset, Sibal may have to look for the weaknesses that enabled
the private couriers to make significant inroads into the preserve of
India Post. The most important reason would seem to be the want of
quality in the performance of the department insofar as mail delivery is
concerned. Over the years the plummeting standards of performance left
the field wide open for couriers to troop in. The department could very
well cite exogenous reasons for the same, but many were the ones that
could be attributed to its own lack of initiatives.
Time was when the Indian postal system was acknowledged as one of the
finest in the world. Although working in a monopolistic environment it
had that in-built system of monitoring mail handling to ensure quality
that was coupled with a spirit of rendering service to the community.
With all 1st class mails being flown down to the closest air
terminal of destinations without any surcharge (not prevalent even in
the West) and in-train sorting of letter mail on almost all railway
routes, the department developed an unique capacity to reach most of the
letters to distant destinations within 48 hours. On occasions letters
would reach faster than the then-prevalent telegrams. The ‘60s, ‘70s and
‘80s were its glorious decades.
Later, unfortunately, the needs of the Railways came to the fore.
With a view to enhancing their passenger carrying capacity they
summarily did away with the coaches in which mail used to be sorted
piece by piece. And, later speeding up of trains on the same old shaky
tracks made such sorting impossible, anyway, taking that edge away from
the department that ensured quality. Soon thereafter the country
witnessed convergence of IT and telecommunications with the help of the
World Wide Web that acted as a midwife to give birth to an era of
instant communications.
To start with, it was e-mail by which one could exchange messages
containing texts, images, and videos with multiple addresses. While
e-mail was initially restricted only to those who had access to
computers, the cell phone put the means of instant communication into
the hands of millions of those who had just a palm-sized handset. With
the advent of “smartphones”, technology has put virtually a portable
computer in the hands of the people with facility, inter alia, of
sending and receiving e-mails and conversing over long distances. Once
“cyberspace” became the medium of instant communication conventional
messaging, known now as “hard messaging”, had to take a hit.
And it did. The volume of mail traffic in India fell to 6,677.18
million pieces in 2006-07 from the figure of 15,749.30 million in
1997-98 – a hit of severe proportions. Internationally too, there were
clear signs of the Internet eating into postal systems. Statistics
provided by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) show that between 2008 and
2009 domestic mail volumes were globally down 12 per cent. Obviously,
the World Wide Web had a worldwide impact and India Post was not alone
in losing its “bread & butter” business.
With the sharp decline in traffic, India Post virtually threw in the
towel. Instead of aggressively trying to trap the traffic captured by
the progressively consolidating courier industry, it drastically
downsized its mail establishment adversely impacting its efficiency.
Whatever mail it received – mostly documents, periodicals and other 2nd
class stuff – got horribly delayed in delivery. Even the department’s
answer to couriers, the EMS Speedpost, could not match its potential
because of lack of manpower and, of course, that kind of agility which
is needed to compete with private operators.
No wonder people lost confidence in it. Predictably, the couriers
moved in, capturing the traffic originating from corporations, banks and
other sundry mailers. They seem to be cashing in on the reported
“exponential” growth in mail volumes unleashed by the country’s rapid
economic growth and widespread use of the very same technology that hit
the department hard. IndiaKnowledge@Wharton, an online resource, found
that Pitney Bowes, a mail-management service-provider, is bullish about
India finding in it, inter alia, “… rapid increase in cell phone
subscriber-base, statement-based credit and debit card usage, and
computerized billing by utilities” suggesting an upward trend in mail
traffic. Only it was escaping the departmental radars.
One would, therefore, tend to think it is not a policy that is
necessary to “take on” the couriers. What is needed is revamping of the
system with proper, pragmatic staffing and a new work-culture that is
committed, agile and vigilant to raise the standards of performance by
several notches. The Post Office is synonymous with mail (including its
express variety); all its other activities, even those related to social
and financial sectors, are only add-ons. It is, therefore, imperative
for it to take steps to revitalise its mail delivery system to
re-inspire confidence among its users and give the couriers a run for
their money. If there is a will there is a way.–INFA
(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)
http://www.sarkaritel.com/postal-policy-challenging-couriers
