Postal tariff to mail an ordinary unreliable mail-article (local) weighing 500 gms will be Rs 125 (GST exempted). But same local mail-article if mailed through fast and assured delivery of Speed Post will cost just Rs 36 (inclusive of Rs 6 as GST). Such irrationality in mail-tariffs costs heavily to postal-department with premium postal-services like Speed Post not giving desired profits which may compensate heavy losses on other essential postal-services like post-cards, inland-letter-cards, registered newspapers etc.
Postal-department has different mail-tariffs for local and non-local mail articles sent through premium postal-services like Speed Post, while it is uniform for ordinary postal-services. Tariffs for Speed Post and other premium postal-services should also be common for local and non-local mail-articles. Premium postal-services have additive of GST, while no GST is added on ordinary postal-services. Imposing GST on selected premium postal-services is like putting revenue from one pocket to another that too with a bias between premium and ordinary postal-services. Department of Posts can revise ordinary mail-tariff to Rs 10 per 50 gms or part instead of present Rs 5 per 20 gms or part. Speed Post tariff can be fixed commonly at Rs 20 or Rs 30 (inclusive of GST if imposable) per 50 gms or part both for local and non-local mail-articles.
Foreign mail-tariffs should be independently fixed separately for air and sea-surface mail rather than imposing air-surcharge on irrational sea-surface mail-tariffs which at several slabs results in more air-tariff for a mail-article than if sent the same in two parts. Foreign-mail tariffs can be fixed for 20 gms or part slab-weight independently for air and sea-surface-mail.
Loss-making and unpopular inland-letter-cards should be abolished. However, post-card should be retained but priced at rupee one only in meghdoot category where an appreciable part of revenue-loss is offset through sponsoring. Even beggars refuse to accept coins of 50 paisa which otherwise also are hardly visible in circulation making it senseless to price ordinary post-card at 50 paisa. All other types of post-cards (business or printed) can be priced at Rs 10. All postal-tariff should now be in complete rupee rather than paisa.
Postal-department should stop delivering post-cards with rubber-stamps (printed category) to Akashvani where many regular listeners send their choices of film-songs by putting fixed rubber-stamps on ordinary post-cards which must be covered under printed category of post-cards.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
