One of the most important duties of a Superintendent is to watch carefully the work of village postmen. Statistics are kept regularly of the articles delivered and collected by them, and these statistics give a very true indication of the places where new post offices are required in rural tracts. In this way the Department keeps in touch with the whole country, and a special grant has been allowed by Government for opening experimental offices in places which show signs of needing permanent ones. An experimental office is opened for a period of six months and, if it leads to a development of correspondence and pays its way, it is made permanent at the end of that time, but unless it is a complete failure the experiment is extended up to two years in order to give the people of the neighbourhood every chance of retaining the office. This policy has been most successful and has taught the village people that they are largely responsible for the maintenance of their own post offices. The postmaster is invariably a local man, either the village schoolmaster or a shopkeeper, who gets a small salary, which, combined with the dignity of His Majesty's mails, gives him a direct interest in making the office a profitable concern.
The annual statistics of the Post Office serve as a barometer of the prosperity of India. The Department has entered into the lives of the people with its lines of communication, its savings bank, money orders, payment of pensions and sale of quinine. It has only one aim and that aim is recognized by all, namely, to do the greatest good for the greatest number.
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.