THE INDIAN POSTMAN
The conditions under which postal articles in England and India are
delivered differ so vastly that a knowledge of Indian life is necessary
in order to understand the difficulties that lie in the way of good
delivery work in this country. The smart official walking four miles
an hour and shooting the contents of his satchel into every house on
his beat with a rat-a-tat is unknown. House doors in India have no
knockers and no letter-boxes, and among the better class inhabitants,
both European and Indian, it is customary to send messengers to the
post office to fetch the unregistered mail, so that to this extent the
postman's work is reduced. The balance of the articles received by him
often forms a strange medley in many languages, of which perhaps he is
able to read one with difficulty. In a large town like Calcutta letters
are received addressed in as many as a dozen different languages, and
special clerks versed in the various tongues have to be employed.
Luckily people of the same race are accustomed to congregate in the
same quarters of the town, and the postmen are able to get some of the
local residents to assist them in deciphering many a doubtful address.
In Bombay certain private delivery agencies exist, which are recognized
by the Department and which work very satisfactorily. On the whole
the distribution of letters to the public is performed in a leisurely
fashion which is quite in accordance with the national character. One
may often see a postman, with the assistance of a dozen of the literate
inhabitants of the quarter, spelling out from a dirty piece of folded
paper an address, which turns out to be one Gunga Din living near the
temple of Hanuman in the courtyard of some ancient who has died years
ago, but whose name is still perpetuated in the soil where his house
once stood. Gunga Din may be dead or vanished, the quarter knows him
no more, but his sister's grandnephew arrives to take the letter,
and after some haggling agrees to pay the 1 anna due on it, for such
letters are invariably sent bearing. This little episode being finished
the postman proceeds on his beat to find another enigmatical addressee,
and is it any wonder that, although his salary is often a low one, the
Indian postman is one of the most expensive delivery agents in the
world? He seldom delivers more than three hundred articles a day, and
in the Indian business quarters of the town he gets rid of the majority
of these at the post office door, since the merchants and others who
expect letters always waylay the postman just as he is proceeding on
his beat, knowing well that it may be many hours before he will find it
convenient to visit them at their houses.
In the matter of slow delivery, however, the public are more
frequently to blame for delays than the postman, especially in the
case of articles which have to be signed for. Parcels, money orders
or registered letters are taken at the door by a servant and, if the
sahib is at his bath or busy, there is a long and tedious wait before
the signed receipts are brought back. It is extraordinary how callous
people are in this respect towards the interests of the Post Office
and their own neighbours, while they are always ready to complain if
the smallest delay or mistake occurs to any articles for themselves.
It can be easily understood that where such conditions prevail, and
that is all over India, fast delivery is impossible, and the very best
regulations for getting the men quickly to their beats are useless when
they are detained unnecessarily at every house.
[Illustration: COMBINED PASSENGER AND MAIL MOTOR VAN. KANGRA VALLEY
SERVICE]
In India most money orders are paid at the door by postmen, and in
towns, where there are large payments to be made, special sets of
postmen are employed for the purpose. The rules regarding the payment
of money orders are very strict and, when the payees are not well-known
persons, identification by a respectable resident is insisted upon.
In large pilgrim resorts, like Benares, where the pilgrims are
continually getting remittances and are necessarily unknown, there is
a special class of professional identifiers, consisting chiefly of the
innkeepers. These men for a small fee are always ready to swear to
the identity of any pilgrim for whom a money order has arrived, and,
strange to say, they are often ready to pay up if it is found that
their identification was incorrect and that the money was paid to the
wrong person, a not unfrequent occurrence.
The postman, however, has to bear the brunt in case of the
identification not being complete, and his responsibility in the matter
is great. The convenience to the public of having their money brought
to their doors is considerable, but it is a source of continual anxiety
and expense to the Post Office. Large sums of money are entrusted
daily to men on small pay. When the limit, which a postman is allowed
to take, is exceeded, an overseer has to accompany him on his beat.
Accounts have to be kept with each of the money order postmen and must
be settled before the day's cash can be closed. Complaints of short
payment are frequent and necessitate detailed inquiries with usually
very unsatisfactory results, while the opportunities for blackmail are
unlimited. Despite these drawbacks, it would now be scarcely possible
to revert to a system by which everyone who received a money order
was obliged to take payment of it at a post office, although greater
security for both the public and the Department would be gained
thereby. In certain parts of the country rural delivery is effected
with extraordinary difficulty. On the North-West frontier the village
postman goes in danger of his life from trans-border tribesmen. In the
forest tracts of Central India the attacks of man-eating tigers are not
merely travellers' tales, but grim realities. In the riverine districts
of Eastern Bengal the postman has to go from village to village by
boat, and a storm on one of these immense rivers is a bad thing to
face in a frail canoe. Nor is the boat journey the worst trouble; a
long tramp from the bank through swampy rice and jute fields is often
the only way to a village which has to be visited twice a week. It is
no wonder that the village postman sometimes takes the easiest way
of delivering his letters by going to the most important place in
his beat on market day; for, if he cannot find the actual addressees
there, he is pretty sure to find some people from the vicinity who are
willing to take charge of their neighbours' correspondence, but often
not too careful about delivering it. Hence the origin of much trouble,
complaints and hard swearing. Half a dozen witnesses are always
forthcoming to affirm that the postman visited the village _in propria
persona_ on that particular day, and to prove it the visit book with
the signature of one of the perjurers is produced. How can the mere
negative evidence of another half-dozen stand against these convincing
proofs?
On the Malabar side of the peninsula, where a very strict form of
Brahminism prevails, persons of low caste are forbidden to enter the
quarters of a town occupied by Brahmins, and care has to be taken to
place these quarters in the beats of high caste postmen. In Palghat
there was almost a riot on one occasion when a postman of inferior
caste attempted to enter a Brahmin street in the performance of his
duties, and the Postmaster-General was promptly called to order by the
indignant inhabitants. It was nearly a question whether he should be
fined and compelled to feed a thousand beggars in accordance with the
custom of the caste, but, on proving that he was an indigent member
of the Indian Civil Service with a wife and family in England, he was
pardoned on admitting his error and promising that no repetition of the
offence should occur.
As a rule the Indian postman is reasonably honest and, if not
interfered with at an unseasonable moment by an over-zealous
inspector, his accounts will come out square in the course of time.
The maintenance of a private debit account with the Department at
the expense of the payees of money orders is not unknown. The usual
practice is to withhold the payment of a certain number of money orders
for a few days and to use the money for some profitable speculation,
such as cotton gambling or betting on the opium sales. Recently one
of the most respected postmen in the Big Bazaar of Calcutta was found
to have overreached himself in carrying out this policy. He was on a
very heavy money order beat, and used regularly to keep back a number
of money orders and forge the payees' receipts so as to satisfy the
office that payment had been made. He kept a private account of these,
and when he decided to pay any one whose money had been withheld he
filled up a blank form, of which plenty are always available, and took
the payee's signature on this. The practice continued for some time
and, as everyone got paid in turn and the postman was a most plausible
fellow, no complaints were made. At last his speculations went wrong,
he got into very deep water and an unpleasant person complained to the
postmaster that he had not received a money order which he knew to have
been sent weeks before. This led to an inquiry, and the postman, being
caught unawares, was unable to account for about 17,000 rupees' worth
of money orders due to various people in the city.
One of the great problems of the Post Office in large towns is to
arrange deliveries and beats of postmen so that people will get their
letters in the shortest time after the arrival of the mail trains.
It used to be thought that the best way to effect this purpose was
to have several delivery centres in order that postmen might be near
their beats and the waste of time in walking to the beats be avoided.
To enable this to be done, the Railway Mail Service was expected to
sort all postal articles into separate bags for the different delivery
offices. The principle is excellent in theory, but in practice it has
not worked well and has led to indiscriminate missending to wrong
delivery offices. For instance, Madras at one time had twenty-six
delivery offices and, if people could have been induced to address
their correspondence to one of these offices with the word (Madras)
in brackets underneath, there might have been some hope of it being
properly sorted by the Railway Mail Service, but probably 80 per cent
of articles were simply addressed to Madras with or without the name
of a street, so that the sorters were set an impossible task and the
General Post Office had to maintain a special staff for sorting and
conveying such letters to the offices from which they would eventually
be delivered. The present policy is to have as few delivery offices
as possible, and to have postmen conveyed to more distant beats. This
has proved far more satisfactory; it relieves the work in the R.M.S.,
enables the postmen to be kept under better control and reduces the
possibility of articles going astray.
While working at the best arrangements for delivery at Calcutta Mr.
Owens, late Presidency Postmaster, devised the system of what is known
for want of a better name as "continuous delivery." Every beat is
provided with a locked box placed in a shop or some suitable place
in the beat, and the letters for delivery are placed in this box by
messengers sent direct from the post office. The postman goes straight
to his beat and remains on duty there for six hours, he finds his
letters in the box and is supposed to make the complete round of his
beat every hour, delivering articles and clearing the pillar boxes _en
route_. When he returns to the locked box he finds a fresh consignment
of letters for delivery, and deposits those that he has collected for
despatch, to be taken away by the messenger on his next visit. The
system is a good one and has worked well. It saves labour and, if the
beats are properly supervised and the postmen work conscientiously, a
great quickening up of delivery is effected. If, however, supervision
is at all lax, human nature asserts itself, postmen are inclined to
loiter and they allow letters to accumulate so that one round can be
made to do the work of two. Owing to the difficulty of supervision, the
continuous delivery system has not many ardent supporters in the Post
Office at the present time.
The postman is, in fine, one of the most important factors in the
Department, and upon his energy and honesty much depends. It therefore
behoves the authorities to see that a good class of man is recruited.
In addition to being able to read and write the language of that part
of the country in which he serves, he should know enough English to
be able to read addresses easily, but in order to obtain this class
of man careful recruitment is necessary and a good initial salary
with reasonable prospects of promotion must be given. Much has been
done in recent years to improve the status of postmen and all branch
postmasterships, which are not held by extra-departmental agents,
are now open to them. This is a great step forward. The Department
used to be very parsimonious in the matter of uniforms, and in many
important offices postmen had to pay for them themselves. Nor was
there any uniformity even in each circle about the uniforms supplied
by Government. In one town red coats and blue turbans were seen,
in another blue coats and red turbans, in another khaki coats and
nondescript turbans, while the men who supplied themselves with uniform
presented at times the most extraordinary appearance. The pattern
of postmen's uniform has now been standardized for each circle, and
uniforms are supplied free of cost in all head offices and large
sub-offices. Warm clothing is also given in all places with a cold
climate. There is no doubt about the value of a uniform to a postman.
It adds a certain amount of dignity to him and, like the soldier,
he is the better man for having a distinctive badge of office. The
pay has recently been greatly improved and much has been done to
ameliorate conditions under which they serve. There are over 27,000
postmen in India; the interests of these men are identical with those
of the Department, and their welfare should be the aim of every postal
officer.