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Business

How to bail desi snail mail.

By: Karthik :+: Under: Business, It Happens Only in India, Opinion
On: ⋅ September 11, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Let’s start with not making them look like giant red bottles, shall we?

Image from Andy2Boyz

With more Indians getting online, snail mail in India is taking a big hit. What is suprising is the fact that various branches of the Indian government are following suit, leaving the postal directorate to look at various cost cutting measures.

The Telegraph reports about one such post office in Assam.

On August 9, the Silchar office of the Assam chief postmaster general received a terse message from the directorate of posts and telegraph, stating that the Silchar divisional post office had been downgraded to the level of an office of the superintendent of post offices.

Forgetting the politics and labor unions for a few minutes, the fact of the matter is that reliance on snail mail has drastically reduced. Way back in 2000, the USPS came up with a number of e-services to keep themselves in business. None of which took off, but the USPS tried.

For India to save its postal system, it needs to draw inspiration from the USPS, stop thinking like a government agency and start thinking like a private one. To begin with the website needs to be fixed. As of right now, the http://indiapost.gov.in site is down.

One of the things USPS did was to supplement its postal system with a rich online infrastructure. No longer do you have to wait for your signature receipt to be walked home, you could check it online. You can track the progress of your mail online and you can update your address online and the list is practically endless.

USPS was also smart to cash in on pop culture. You can find a wide variety of stamps, cards and postal stationary with prints of Disney characters, artists and movies. Some were made in limited numbers, driving up the value and creating valuable collectors items. We in India still fight over green and brown Gandhi stamps. The new stamps that are released always have a political touch to it and even when pop culture is represented, it stays boring. Your face on a stamp is considered prestigious, not a way for the post office to make money.

Subsidized fees, irregular delivery and lack of professionalism do not help either. The fees can be adjusted, but the latter points need intervention and it is no small task to bring about such a massive change.

Do we have any more suggestions to add?

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