Wednesday, December 9, 2015

MORE IDEAS ON THE POST OFFICE

FROM BUSINESS WORLD OF 29 APRIL 2006


Revitalizing the post office


In my column in March, I had written that the government should allow competition in last-mile postal service – that it should call for bids for postal delivery to a particular area for one year at a time, and give the contract to the lowest bidder. I think my idea is excellent, but for that very reason it would not appeal to the government. It believes that the better should not become the enemy of the good, so it always looks for a worse option. So this time I will suggest less-than-ideal options.
The post office has been losing mail to couriers. Nowadays, even India International Centre, which was once the bastion of retired civil servants, sends its programmes to members by courier. On the other hand, my friend Bhupa Dalal, who has figured earlier in this column, is the only interlocutor who writes me post cards. And I can certify that the post cards are a perfect service – they reach me next day from Bombay without fail. The post office does not guarantee their delivery. But it has two other services that do, more or less – registration and certification.
I would therefore suggest that the post office should offer couriers – and only couriers – a guaranteed quick delivery service. Just now, couriers have to ship their packages by air; only the post office has a monopoly in the use of trains. Hence its costs are much lower. It can charge three times what it is charging just now, and yet it would save couriers money to use the post office instead of making their own arrangements. They would also be able to deliver in remote places where it is too much trouble to send a messenger. They would be concerned that the post office would not be as reliable as themselves. To reassure them, it should insure them against non-delivery or late delivery – let us, say, refund of twice the charge for late delivery, and Rs 10,000 a package for non-delivery. They can pass on this insurance to their customers. In this way, the post office would cream off some of the couriers’ profits, and the couriers would make even bigger profits. The entire delivery industry would become more efficient; that increase in efficiency can be used to leave both the post office and the couriers better off.
Couriers are not the only people whom the post office can offer services; they can offer new services to their own customers. Postmen should be given laptops with wireless connections and little printers. As they go their rounds, they should deliver e-mails to people who do not have access to them, and e-mail their messages. They should be given distinctive uniforms (actually, they are given money for two new uniforms a year, but they blow it up on more covetable objects). After delivering letters every day, they should set themselves up in a prominent place and dispense postal goods and services, as well as of others who are prepared to pay the post office for the service. They may, for instance, carry a cell phone and act as a mobile public call office.
Postmen collectively know by face a higher proportion of India’s population than any other institution. They should find uses for that knowledge. They should, for instance, give everyone a unique identity number. We would then no longer have to write addresses on letters. Even if you did not know where our girl friend of last year was, the post office would deliver a love letter to her. The Election Commission and the Income Tax Department would no longer have to give their own identity cards to everyone they deal with; the post office ID would suffice. If a garment manufacturer wanted to locate all females over 6 feet, the post office would do it for him.
If the post office were to offer right-on-time letter delivery service to couriers, it would have to ensure that mail trains would run on time. It should buy off mail trains, and make a binding agreement with the railways whereby mail trains would have priority over all other trains. The post office would then be able to offer to deliver not just packages but also humans on time. To timeliness it should add luxury; it should offer a first class that would surpass the best airline, and charge appropriately high fares. It would make such profits that it could afford to pay the railways something for giving mails priority; both government departments would be better off.

These are what business would call win-win solutions. They are out-of-the-box solutions, which the Prime Minister is fond of – in principle. He should sometimes practise what he believes.