Technology aids India postal system
For 138 years, India's colonial-era postal network – the largest in the world – has worked like a rusty clockwork, with dingy offices, low-paid mail carriers and a creaky infrastructure.
Now, the government hopes that some creative marketing and wireless technology will get the mail where it needs to be and on time.
On Monday, India's postal service was thrown open for the first time to advertisements, giving private companies the chance to have their message splashed across mailboxes and postcards, even on mail carriers' uniforms.
India has the world's largest postal network, with 158,000 post offices and 525,000 mailboxes serving more than 1 billion people. Yet not much about its methods have changed since it was founded by the British in 1864 – including the color of its red mailboxes.
The government wants to shake off that colonial legacy – beginning with the mailboxes, which can be painted in any color advertisers want.
Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan said the new steps have the potential to bring in a lot of money for the cash-strapped postal service, which has survived for years on government subsidies.
For example, companies will be able to use half of one side of a postcard to advertise their products at a cost of 4 cents each. With 29 million postcards sold across India every year, postal authorities could earn as much as $1.2 million in extra cash.
That would go a long way in a country where mail carriers are paid an average of $83 a month.
The plan has gotten a head start with Rajnikanth, a Tamil language actor who uses a single name, in southern India paying $41,660 to advertise his new film, "Baba," on 1 million cards that will be sold in the country's southern states. Top consumer goods manufacturers like Hindustan Lever, the Indian affiliate of Unilever, and Tata Tea have also joined the race.
Advertising on a postcard makes great business sense, Mahajan said, since postcards reach every corner of the country, unlike television programs or newspapers.
"You pay a fraction of what you pay the model and it gives you much greater shelf value," he said.
The communications minister said he would do anything to bring in more money that he could share with mail carriers, whom he described as the most honest and hardworking government employees in a country mired in corruption and scams.
There are other alternatives to the mail in India's cities, including courier companies. However, for the nation's far-flung villages, the mail carrier is sometimes the only link the government has with poor residents in remote areas.
In many areas, illiterate villagers ask them to read letters from their faraway relatives. Bollywood – India's prolific movie industry – has made the mail carrier a part of folklore through songs and dramas depicting him as the much-awaited messenger for pining lovers and longing mothers.
By the end of this year, they'll have something else to carry: mobile phones. The idea is to enable people in remote villages without phone service to make calls for a fee, 25 percent of which will go into the mail carrier's pocket. The mail is picking up the cost of the program.
Proponents contend the new program will help reach out to villages with a technology that most residents aren't familiar with.
The move is part of India's ongoing economic reforms program designed to give private companies a larger stake in public services that have for decades been state-controlled in the former Soviet-style economy.
Uniforms will also be paid for by private companies and carry corporate logos.
India's mail carriers will get one more perk out of the new plan: those who earn the most commissions on mobile phone calls and other services will be eligible to receive a moped.
