The telegram postal service will come to an end after 160 years with the world's last one being sent somewhere in India on July 15.
The telegram postal service may not be a favorite means of communication among the people today with the wide range of high-end technology devices available now, but some still rely on the 160-year-old service to send messages to their dear ones. But this is likely to end July 15, when the last telegram will be sent somewhere in India.
The history of the ancient telegram postal service goes back to 1837, when Samuel Morse sent the first ever telegraph in Washington. The telegram service was started in India by William O'Shaughnessy, a British doctor and inventor, who used the service for the first time in India in 1850. That was the beginning of a new era of communication.
In India, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), based in New Delhi, still provides telegram services, which are set to end soon.
The BSNL board suffered a loss of over $23 million every year to run this service. It could give no competition to SMSes and smartphones , Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, told the Monitor.
The telegram service in India is entwined with its history. It helped the British put down a popular revolt in 1857 and a telegram was used to communicate between the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and London about Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir in 1949.
In the 1980s when telegrams were popular, over 60 million were sent each year in India. But with the growth of technology, many of these offices were shut down and only 75 remain in existence.
One of the employees at the Delhi office, R.D.Ram, who dedicated 38 years of service to the telegram department, is not happy with the change and having to learn new skills to fit into another department. The 998 workers in the department will now be shifted.
Ram noted that telegrams have many legal benefits, which new technologies may lack. "It is still accepted by the courts as a valid form of evidence. And is taken seriously by a judge when a government official sends a telegram to say he is unwell and cannot be present in court today," he said.
A majority of telegrams are sent by the government while only 35 percent are from the general public. But in most cases, Ram noticed that runaway couples use this method of communication fearing violence from their family.
Many people are looking forward to using this long-serving mode for the last time mid July and keep it as a souvenir.
