CHAPTER X 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.

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.