The postal department is a huge machinery of both manpower as well as
infrastructure. What has the government done to put this machinery to
good use?
Extract of Interview with Ravi Shankar Prasad
India Post is a fine 150-year-old body, which always remained in the
background. I have pushed them in a big way. Improving their operations,
and pushing them for bigger things. Speed Post has been adjudged as the
best courier service by the CAG in eight states of India, and the
report is before Parliament. Their revenue has grown by 7.1 per cent …
We have also gone for a lot of modernisation of the department. In 2004,
we had only four ATMs. Now there are 913 postal ATMs. We have about
1,54,000 post offices all over the country, out of which about 25,000
are regular post offices and the rest are rural post offices.
This vast network has been put to work for e-commerce delivery, and this
is a very outstanding success story that I need to acknowledge. What is
important is that the entire postal department is very inspired. We are
supposed to play a role in the field of digital growth and financial
inclusion. The postal department has opened 84,00,000 Sukanya Samriddhi
Yojana accounts. All the banks combined have opened only 4,00,000
accounts.
