Postal reforms

Indian democracy is perhaps not prepared for big-ticket changes in the postal sector. But we can hardly afford to shy away from rationalization of the network of post offices in cities and bigger towns. Do we really need a non-delivery Town Sub Post Office in every nook and corner of the city? Merger of these offices with nearby bigger offices will not only reduce expenses, it will facilitate better management of the network and improved quality control. We need to introspect and act

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Perhaps no other sector in the world was affected so adversely after the communication revolution in the last three decades as the postal sector. The days of private mails carried and delivered by the post office are a matter of the past now and the young adults of Generation Z may not have experienced the charm of receiving a handwritten postcard, Inland Letter or Aerogramme from the near and dear ones. Many must wonder what the postal employees are doing when their main function has ceased to exist, and how the organizations all over the world are surviving.

Interestingly many postal corporations in the world are doing fairly well in terms of their profitability. Market value of their shares increased in recent years, some are paying consistent dividends to shareholders. Deutsche Post AG (Germany), La Poste (France), Royal Mail (UK) and Post NL (Netherlands) and Japan Post have many success stories. These companies have repositioned themselves and instead of traditional mails, they are primarily focusing on e-Commerce and logistics and leveraging their physical presence everywhere.

The Post Office in India is also trying to reinvent itself and many incremental changes have been observed in recent decades. The working strength of India Post today is a little over 400,000 which was 600,000 a couple of decades back. On city roads one rarely comes across the age-old Letter Boxes for collection of mails. Smaller post offices no longer bother to maintain essential postal stationery like postcards as there is hardly any demand.

Delivery of unregistered mail, whatever is left, has already turned out to be quite erratic. If there was no universal service obligation, perhaps by this time the government would have discontinued such services. In their effort to reposition the Post Office, a new set of Rules and Regulations (December 2024) were brought out by India Post to replace the old ones prevailing since 1933.