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.
CHAPTER XI
POST OFFICE BUILDINGS
"I don't think" was the terse though somewhat vulgar reply of a well-known district officer on the western side of India when asked if he would like to have a post office erected in a conspicuous place at the head-quarters of his district. He was willing to give the site in question for a clock tower, a public library or even a statue of one of his predecessors, but a post office, "No, thank you." The reason for this attitude may be easily understood by those who have seen the ordinary Indian post office of a few years ago. It used generally to be a rented building quite unsuited for the purpose and made perfectly hideous by small additions and projections constructed from time to time in order to meet demands for increased space. The windows and doors were used not for light and air nor even for giving access to the interior, but for business purposes. They were blocked up with the exception of a small hole just the size of a pane of glass, through which the members of the public had to try to get a clerk to attend to their requirements. When a Government building existed it was very little better, except in the matter of repairs. The interior of the ordinary post office was a dreadful sight a few years ago, a mass of untidy tables, a large number of cupboards, known in India as almirahs, ill-designed sorting cases and dirt, this last article being the most prevalent everywhere. Letters were sorted on the floor for convenience, and the delivery table with its ragged occupants, who did duty for postmen, was a sight for the gods.
The position of a post office in a town is a matter of the first importance, but the chief object of the authorities in the early days of the Imperial Post Office seems to have been economy. As a building in a back street naturally costs less than one in a main street, many of the city offices are hidden away in the most inaccessible slums. It is, indeed, a case of Mohamed and the mountain, and the Post Office, secure in its monopoly, was not going to afford any unnecessary conveniences to its clients. Many of my readers will doubtless recall some of those upstairs offices in big cities, which do an enormous amount of work, especially in the afternoon, the approach being a single staircase just broad enough for one person to ascend. Imagine the turmoil at the busy hours of the day. In Bara Bazar, Calcutta, and Benares City, two famous instances which come to mind at the moment, where there is a heavy despatch of parcels, the confined space round the parcel windows was the scene of a petty riot every afternoon. Such a state of affairs could not exist for a month in a country where the better class of people perform their own post office business; unfortunately in India all this kind of work is done by native messengers who are not particular about the surroundings of an office and usually have plenty of time to spare. Things, however, improved in recent years under the direction of Sir Arthur Fanshawe and Sir Charles Stewart-Wilson, both of whom had the critical faculty strongly developed. Assisted by the genius of Mr. James Begg, Consulting Architect to the Government of India, they have done much to improve the modern post office, with the result that the Department now has some really fine buildings. For beauty of design the new Bombay General Post Office, completed in 1910, is one of the finest in the East. The reproduction of it in this book gives but little idea of its splendid proportions, and its internal structure has been planned with a view to facilitate postal work and to allow for future expansion.
The General Post Office in Calcutta was built in 1868 from designs made by Mr. Granville, Architect to the Government of India. The site is of great historical interest owing to its association with the tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The building is hardly large enough now for the great mass of work which it has to transact and, although the removal of the Postmaster-General's Office and the Sorting Branch has somewhat relieved the congestion, there is already a demand for increased accommodation. The same thing has happened in Madras where there is a large Post and Telegraph Office facing the sea, designed by Mr. Chisholm and opened to the public in 1885. The expansion of business has outgrown the capacity of the building, and the time has come to construct a new post office and to use the present building as a Telegraph Office. Most head offices and important sub-offices are now designed to provide a proper hall for the public who wish to transact business, with a counter for clerks and sufficient open space in the building to allow each branch to work independently and in comfort under the supervision of a responsible officer. At Lahore, Nagpur, Patna, Chittagong, Bareilly, Rawalpindi, Cawnpore, Howrah, Poona, Agra, Allahabad, Mandalay, Benares, Sholapur and Mount Road Madras, excellent offices have been recently constructed, and the next few years will see Rangoon, Delhi, Dacca, Darjeeling, Ajmere, Ahmedabad and several other large towns provided with post office buildings, not only scientifically planned, but handsomely designed.