It is 1030pm on 11th March 2012
What does one think of when one reads that the government is planning to bring out yet another commemorative postal stamp in honour of a great person or a great national tradition or event?
To me it reinforces an image of a government department that refuses to be innovative in its approach and glued to an era that is fading into oblivion. For how else can one conclude on the fact that communications technologies (mobile, internet,…..) and communications business models (couriers……) are effectively making conventional postage (and postage stamps) an anachronism?
So what innovations can still keep government postal departments relevant to their customer base and postage stamps contemporary? I can think of the following:
(a) Use their extensive geographic network of offices and postmen to provide innovative banking, insurance and healthcare solutions which result in wider penetration and uptake of these critical services. For instance can post-offices sell specially-designed stamps of different denominations that can be traded by its owners for receiving upto 10 times their value in terms of medicines at any pharmacist? The 9X value difference could perhaps be recovered through a system of village / local community group insurance, whose premium is paid partly from the stamp costs and partly by government and partly by the local pharmacists. Stamps thus sold are pasted in a passbook that can be attested by the local postmaster at the time of purchase and duly cancelled by the medicine store where the medicines are bought.
(b) Provide special training to the extensive community of postmen to become proficient in mobile texting, internet and email, and then use them to provide instant communications services to the digitally-underprivileged customers. The payments for such services can be on highly-competitive basis through a system of sale of stamps. For instance, a customer buys a Rs 2 stamp from the postman which enables her/him to send a two-way communication of upto 25 words each on mobile texting or email service. (S)He uses the stamp the next day to demand seeing the reply message that (s)he has received. The postman is mobile (on his bicycle!) and makes his rounds across the community at regular intervals of the day. For higher value of stamps, the customer gets to send longer messages or send and receive graphic and image attachments.
Do these ideas make some sense to you? Do you have better ideas? Please let me know. Hope you are having a great weekend.
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