IT makes telegrams & inland letters obsolete,logs out global telegraph

While at the domestic level the popularity of telegrams and inland letters has suffered a major blow,the international telegraph service has been shut down. The service was terminated on April 30 this year.

Since several countries had closed their international telegram service,the service was ceased by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). Thanks to the world wide web (www),the younger generation is glued to faster and user-friendly technology.

These days the service is usually used for sending notices by the Army authorities,interview intimations,Court notices. Seldom is such a service used for personal purposes.

The earlier machines used for telegraphy are now extinct and teleprinters and Morse code machines are nowhere to be seen. The sector 17 office earlier had 50 teleprinters and three Morse machines. Now,all it has is a desktop and a printer.

Phonograms,too,have almost gone out of sight. This was a procedure used by those who had land-line telephones.

The sender would telephone the office and dictate the message and the bill would be added in the monthly telephone bill. The number of phonograms has come down to 50 a month whereas they used to be in hundreds a decade ago.

Others systems like stamps,inland letters,envelopes and postcards too are becoming vintage. Earlier,stamp sales used to be of the value of Rs 50,000 a day; today that has come down to Rs 20,000 a day.

The number of inland letters sold each day was as high as 1,200 on average; today the figure reaches hardly 50 a day.

Post officials say that 2,000 post cards used to be bought every day; now that number has come down to 500.

Envelopes are the worst affected. Whereas 4,000 used to be bought per day earlier,the purchase now touches a mere 100 a day.

Speaking to Newsline,Prakash Vati,an official with the GPO,Sector 17,since 1991,said,“When I joined here,we used to be four people selling stamps,letters and envelopes. Now,I am the only one and yet I don’t have that much work load as I did earlier”.

She added that stamps and letters are nowadays usually bought for official purposes,predominantly by businessmen. Sudha Singh,a local resident,said,“I don’t buy anything form the post office now. I just visit the postal life insurance branch. Mobile phones have replaced letters and postcards. Now I just wait for a call from my children and not their letters anymore.”