One keeps reading of how the Indian postal system successfully delivers mail addressed to "Ram Lal, near peepul tree, some-godforsaken-village". Meanwhile, urban Indians keep complaining about how mail goes missing.
I've never had missing mail, but I have been miffed for a while that our weekly issue of Tehelka (to which we subscribed a few weeks ago) generally arrives a few days late. Today, too, we received a similarly delayed issue. But I took a closer look at the envelope.
The address was something like
Rahul Siddharthan
(Door number),
Next to Kun Hyundai,
Chennai-41.
That was it. No street name, no "part of town" -- just a door number, landmark and pincode. (Chennai-41 covers Thiruvanmiyur, Kottivakkam, Palavakkam, Neelangarai, and more, most of it -- including my house -- outside city limits). And my issue has been getting delivered without fail -- late, but not missing.
I'm impressed.
I'm pretty sure I included a proper address when subscribing, but have mailed them requesting an address correction. I should also mail my thanks to the postal department.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You planning to send it to "Postal Department, New Delhi-45?"
//the system works beautifully. Major mystery is how the system "incentivizes" (ugh) workers with such low incomes to deliver things on time.
TR: you got a case study on this?
km:
nope, all yours.
km - true, the low-level workers are much more conscientious than the better-paid babus. There is no performance-related incentive in either case that I know of (other than diwali bakshish, which is not very performance-related). May be just a matter of work ethic..
Post a Comment