Senior citizens are lifeline of the department; virtual post offices or e-post offices are the future which will attract youngsters
His relationship with the post office started when he was barely 10. S. Sampath, a septuagenarian, continues to correspond through what many people call the “snail mail service” despite all odds and dissuasion from his family.
For over 60 years, Mr. Sampath has seen the service attain enviable heights of repute, success and efficiency, and then rapidly lose its traditional relevance in the face of modern technology. His son often teases him for posting cards, but nothing stops the septuagenarian from using the Department's services.
“There is no one to pass on my stamp collection in my family. I have stopped writing long letters to my relatives in the village,” said the retired teacher from Kalaivanar Colony, Anna Nagar West.
With the digital world expanding by the day, the idea of a simple hand-written letter seems to be on its way into history. The virtual extinction of hand-written letters is also impacting sale of inland letters and post cards. Individual mails have shrunk to less than 20 per cent of the Postal Department's deliveries.
Bhanurekha Sundar, a resident of Ashok Nagar, said: “When I was young, I used to post 20 to 30 greeting cards. Now, I send and receive greetings through text messages and e-mails. I miss the excitement. I realise that none of us has much time anymore for such niceties.”
Today, if you see customers walking into a post office, they are most likely to despatch something by speed post, to remit bills, send parcels or use its banking services. Launch of more parcel packaging centres and success of retail services and savings schemes, however, are signs of possible demand for its newer services.
Shrinking numbers
Corporates and government departments keep its services going, but the Postal Department is clearly losing its individual customers. A postmaster who did not want to be named said: “The number of individual customers has reduced to 50 per cent compared to two decades ago. There were days when sub-post offices dealt with 10,000 individual mails daily.”
Mergers have brought down the number of post offices as well. Currently there are only around 200 post offices in Chennai and its suburbs and nearly 75 per cent of these are in rented buildings that are under threat of either being moved or closed down.
Sources in the All India Postal Employees Union said that of the 273 post offices in the city only 170 are presently functioning. Many one-man post offices had to be closed as the revenue generated was low.
Officials said the department was on the look out for rented accommodation at affordable rates for post offices. “We have been asking the Chennai Corporation for space. But they are yet to give us concrete replies. Private persons are not willing to rent buildings to us.”
Exploring new avenues
To cope with the mounting expenditure and the heavy subsidising of its primary services, the postal department is morphing into a multi-service provider. The annual growth rate varied between 10 to 15 per cent. The total monthly revenue generated by Chennai city is around Rs.6 crore of which Speed Post alone contributes Rs.2.40 crore. There are also customers who give business worth Rs.25 lakh per month.
“We are taking steps to make post offices more customer friendly by improving the quality of services in areas, including Adyar, Tambaram and T. Nagar. We have authorised 25 franchisees that do all our operations excluding banking and insurance,” said an official.
However, computerisation has not spread to all post offices. “Though a portion of the 2,500 employees in Chennai still find it difficult to adapt to technology, the department also has not been able to implement computerisation universally, which leads to delay in processing time,” admitted a postal official.
‘Sell stamp paper'
J. Srivenkatesh, State president, All India Postal Employees Union, said there was no separate cadre for system operations support. “If there is a problem in the system, nobody knows how to set it right,” he said.
Questioning the rationale behind closing post offices and offering more retail products to customers, he said that in the last two years around 60 post offices have been closed in Chennai. “We have been suggesting that post offices sell stamp paper… we sell revenue stamps anyway. It would be a profit spinning enterprise,” he said.
The Union has been campaigning for removing the system of hubs in Speed Post services as it would only lead to slowing down of deliveries.
“We ensure that 95 per cent Speed Post is delivered on time. Sometimes there is a delay due to non-availability of the person or address being unclear. Parcel services too are very popular with customers. T. Nagar and Mylapore post offices do business up to Rs.1 crore a month at times,” said Postmaster General (Chennai City Region) M.S. Ramanujan.
Shanthi Srinivasan, marketing executive, said proof of address cards, sale of gold coins and parcel services were top of the retail services. “We have good response from customers for services including sale of application forms for universities, HMT watches and solar lamps.”
The expansion of services has led to an increase in work load. A postal assistant who joined recently said: “We work for nearly 12 hours to beat the competition from courier companies. We collect bulk letters from corporate clients. We also have to canvass customers to purchase our retail products.”
Admitting that the senior citizens are the lifeline of the department, the official said virtual post offices or e-post offices are the future of the department to attract youngsters to use the services.
What they say
M.S.Ramanujan, Postmaster General, Chennai City Region
We are repositioning and re-engineering ourselves to be relevant to the changing needs of the customers. The launch of retail services and parcel packaging centres and strengthening of banking services are the recent moves to stay in touch with customers. We are focussing on relocation of post offices instead of closure. There are also plans for a massive technological upgradation in the next two years.
Elizabeth Sam, homemaker from Madipakkam
The habit of writing letters had many incentives. We had pen friends across the world, and more than the letter, we valued the stamps. Collecting stamps and knowing about them has helped me to de-stress myself throughout the 50 years that I have been collecting them. I like collecting thematic stamps, mainly on flora and fauna, and now, I collect a lot of Sri Lankan stamps. My sustained interest in stamps has not only helped me as a teacher, but also ensured that I had interesting things to do, even after retirement.
G. Kaliasundaram, Investor, post office scheme
Being a senior citizen, I find the services of the postal agents very satisfactory. Even at odd hours in the day, we can call them up and speak. We invest in the postal scheme because it is convenient for us, and we do not have to go to the office personally for every need. However, if their business is affected, it will in turn affect us.
If Fedex can earn billions essentially essentially being in the same business, why not USPS or Indian postal dept? I do understand they have to heavily subsidize post cards, but with those numbers dwindling down, its only easy going forward. Fact of the matter is they are unable to reinvent themselves because of lack of leadership, lack of technology, low morale and ageing work force.
Organizations exist to satisfy the needs of the society with products and services. Over time, lifestyles change and new technologies come into being and people’s needs change and some products and services become obsolete. For-profit businesses vanish in response to lack of demand for their offerings. Nonprofit organizations and government services, including the postal service, do not respond to market forces, i.e. people’s needs. Where governments are smart and bold, they foresee the changes and respond to them in time. The leadership of the Indian postal service should develop a retirement and exit plan as their traditional services are not in demand any more. Just as people become old, retire, and depart, so should the organizations.Eons ago, when people were in close knit communities, they communicated orally. As families and friends moved apart, letter writing satisfied the need for communication. Letter writing imposed costs in terms of paper, the gasoline for the vehicles that carry the letters, and finally for disposal of yesterday’s letters. With the Internet, both paper and gasoline are saved with a smaller cost of moving electrons over long distances. Mothers used to ship, via the post office, home-made pickles, favorite sweets, and hand-knitted sweaters for their children living at a distance. Now, with the ready and universal availability of factory made foods, toys, and clothing, the parcel service is also becoming redundant.
One major deterrent forcing people from stepping into the post office is the behaviour of the government servants in that office. It is the inflated ego of these people running the office and there is absolutely no whiff of professionalism in the atmosphere. Why will anyone render the services of a department that is slow, inefficient, stubborn and arrogant?
Such urban-only coverage can hurt the image of the Post Office in India. In many rural areas it is a lifeline that is still relied on above all else. The Postmaster in a village may still read and write the letters (for illiterate customers), he may function as a teacher and so on. This should also have been brought out in the article. To suggest that the postal services as a whole in our country is becoming irrelevant is complete nonsense!
There are lot of other services too offered by the Postal Department in India which people are still unaware of. Everybody thinks that postal department is just for carrying letters from one place to another. And there is a bad belief that the age of the postal department is nearing its end with the advent of internet and mobile phone. But that's not the case actually is. Postal department offers a variety of services. The Postal Life Insurance for government employees and Rural Postal Life Insurance for others is one of the best Insurance available in the country. The thing is most of us are unaware of it because of the lack of publicity it has when compared with other Insurance service providers. Then coming on to the next, there is a savings bank working under the department. With a network of 1.55 lakh post office the department touches every corner of the country. If provided with latest technology and core banking this can become a crucial player in the country when it comes to banking.
Hi, One thing I wish to put on record that the Money Order system has improved a lot. Earlier when I sent a M.O. to my mother in Kerala from Delhi, it took 4-5 days to reach her but NOW IT IS IN HER HANDS IN 2 DAYS. We would appreciate the same.
Postal department has very good network throughout the country. If mail service market is coming down, then they should try to sell other products / services ( Could be anything like stationary products,internet kiosk, fax machines etc..) using the existing network utilizing the postal resources. The postal resources may be provided with Inter-departmental training so that they can share the load wherever there is a scarcity of resource pool.
I am in US for the last 3 years and I participated in a penpal programme of the Fremont Govt. under one of their programme to connect sixth grade students with the seniors by handwritten letters -- no computer is used. My penpal who is born and brought up in the US to Indian parents wrote a Book on India's Independence as I was a boy of fourteenn and explained to him my feelings at that time. It won the First Prize.
Please Email the Editor