Has todays post come? That used to be the refrain of an age when buying blue inland letters,envelopes and stamps formed part of a prolonged ritual of correspondence. Then the red letter boxes were edged out by couriers and inboxes. One of the startling effects of this e-age first email,and then cheaper mobile phone calls and text messages has been the speed with which it made post offices almost redundant,post scripts of another time. As the volume of mail traffic post cards and inland letters sharply fell from 420 crore pieces in 2001-02 to 169 crore in 2009-10,the balance sheet of India Post got shockingly skewed. Now,under a proposal by the Department of Telecommunications,which has been approved by the government,post offices will go for a technological makeover to press ahead on their twin advantages their still incomparable reach and being the repository of the savings of millions of people. Over 1,000 post offices in metros and big towns will soon have ATMs to service those who hold post office accounts. If things go as planned,then all 144,000 post offices in the country will have the facility over the next five years. Also in the offing is Post Bank,which will facilitate NREGA payments. The payments will be credited to workers accounts under the scheme. This could,eventually,be a solution to the problem that several government schemes face how to reach monetary incentives and benefits to people in regions where banking services are scant. Earlier,India Post began the ePost Office,through which one can carry out basic services like Money Order transactions. These are the earliest glimmers that the sector has not entirely lost imagination,but it can do yet more to enable entrepreneurship and revive the post office as the neighbourhood hub that it used to be.
