In letter and spirit

In letter and spirit

India Post now has three dedicated freight aircraft based in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore to ensure 24-hour Speed Post and Parcel Service to the major metros. All three will converge on Nagpur, at one time in the night, to exchange mail and freight.
This reminds of those once much-enjoyed Dakota services that reached Nagpur at midnight from Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta and exchanged not only mail and postal parcels but also intrepid passengers like me who crowded Nagpur’s small airport and had a whale of a time till ‘Boarding’ — a leisurely call — was announced and then you flew in to see dawn slowly lighting the skies as you neared your respective destinations. It was sometime in the 1970s, if memory serves me right, that this service was withdrawn. Now it’s back — but with a difference.
The aircraft will be bigger and faster. And that will enable the Kolkata aircraft to serve both the Northeast and Delhi, the Bangalore aircraft to serve Chennai as well, and the Mumbai aircraft to offer a dedicated service. History always repeats itself — even if there is a variation or two in flight plans.
: It feels good to walk-in now. That’s 50-year-old Delhi-based K Vijayan, who, like most Indians of his generation, has been a post office regular for most of his life. He could perhaps tell as much about the Indian postal service as any of the about 5 lakh employees of the over 150-year-old organisation. He has seen the transformation of India Post from close quarters — from the drab ‘sarkari’ look to the squeaky clean corporate look with the red-and-yellow logo flashing on service counters. “Not that I had any complaints earlier, but now it looks like a private bank.”
Of late, India Post has a new goal — to turn profitable in less than five years. Just last month it announced a $1 bn IT revamp to automate and integrate its business processes. This week in association with Air India it launched two dedicated freighter aircrafts for faster transmission of Speed Post, mail, parcel and logistics across the country, overnight. The successful Project Arrow, launched last year, as part of the department’s infrastructure development programme is in its third phase already. Likewise, the department has been silently entering new arenas and forging new partnerships. How many of us know that India Post has a tie-up with DHL (yes, one of the leaders in global logistics industry). So, every time you book a parcel at your nearby post office — you have the option to reach 200 countries across the world. You can even track your parcel with just one SMS. The organisation is even planning to launch a virtual post office soon — enabling you to book money orders, send articles and do a lot more online. Post office ATMs are also on the cards. Just a few months ago, it tied up with Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to collect data from 1,183 villages to compile the consumer price index. It already has a tie up with Western Union for incoming payments from abroad. And soon EuroGiro will enable remittances in just an hour.
There’s more. Its vans are even operating on virgin turfs in the north east, armed with GPS devices, so that they can be traced in the event of a Naxal hijack. India Post is also managing over 21 mn NREGA accounts for the Ministry of Rural Development. And now you even have 1,116 customer care centres to address your complaints.