The Hindu : `Mobile' postman scheme to serve rural masses: Mahajan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 12, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

`Mobile' postman scheme to serve rural masses: Mahajan

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI OCT. 11. The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Pramod Mahajan, has expressed the hope that village communication would get a boost with the launching of the proposed "Mobile'' postman scheme.

Elaborating, he said rural postmen would be provided with mobile phones connected under the Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) system as part of the pilot project to be launched in 2,000 post offices covering 10,000 villages in the country. The postman, apart from being in touch with his office, would also be able to help villagers use the phone, thereby fetching additional revenue to the department. A fourth of the revenue netted thus would be paid to the postman as commission, thereby enabling the lowest-paid employee in the department to earn more.

The Minister was speaking after releasing a postal stamp of "Ananda nilaya vimanam,'' the golden canopy over the sanctum sanctorum of the Lord Venkateswara temple at Tirumala, here on Friday. The stamp, published with six colours on imported paper, has a denomination of 1,500 paise. The first day cover portrayed the "Geological Arch'' (Silathoranam), a natural rock formation at Tirumala, believed to be over 1,000 million years old.

Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said the stamp stood clearly ahead of the dozen ones released by him earlier during his 13-month tenure. Against the normal four lakh pieces released on the first day, a whopping 30 lakh pieces of this stamp had been made available at 900 post offices all over the country. "It is the first stamp released by me on a non-mortal subject, the first one related to God and the first one released with my shoes off as a mark of reverence,'' he remarked. Lauding the strides made by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) on the IT front under the guidance of the IT-savvy Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, he said that with schemes like e-seva, e-hundi, e-puja and the like being launched, Lord Venkateswara had become the first "e-God,'' he said amid a thunderous laughter.

Mr. Mahajan dropped enough hints that the already-low telecom prices could go down still further with proper regulatory policies in place and the fair competition prevalent in the market.

Mr. Chandrababu Naidu called the canopy "a symbol of spiritualism and Indian culture.'' Taking his usual line on spiritualism, the Chief Minister said it was a must for development of any country and thanked the Communications Ministry for paying due attention to the subject.

Expressing concern over the hardware sector lagging very much behind its richer cousin, the software industry, Mr. Naidu asked Mr. Mahajan to announce sops and strengthen infrastructure to enable the domestic industry to set its roots firm in the ground. He also urged the Union Minister to vet the possibility of introducing Internet facility to common public in the 1.35 lakh post offices in the country, that would complement his efforts to create an IT-powered society in his State, to which the latter reacted positively.

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`Mobile' postman scheme to serve rural masses: Mahajan