The Post Office Solution:
As we all know (I hope) that the postal services are a dying breed given the emergence of telecommunication!
And given our history we will definitely not shut down the postal department (think of whatever reasons you want them to be). So in turn we will continue to bleed monetarily and productively.
Well I actually think we can make the postal department survive PROFITABLY!
Given the postal departments reach is extensive (practically the whole country) we can make use of them in a different way!
1.The mobile services industry is continuously expanding and they will need to open offices in interior India to service their customers by opening their front end offices in these locations. Now these will most likely be unprofitable but need to be opened to cover area. Also, they will need to be serviced with hiring people.
Simply said the mobile companies can team up with postal department and use their premises for having their front desk. The mobile companies and postal department can agree on a revenue sharing basis which benefits both. Also, the post office can and should house multiple (preferably all of that geography) mobile companies front end as that will eliminate the logic of bias towards anyone particular company.
Taking this a step further, the mobile companies can train the staff of the posts in handling mobile system hardware (base stations/transmitters/etc.). This will in turn reduce the mobile companies cost of employment and make the personnel of posts more productive which in turn will open new employment opportunities for these people. The mobile companies will probably need to just hire one senior person who can guide the lower rung staff. The post office will continue to do stuff of what it currently does but also do this as an add-on. I have more on this but i hope you get the gist.
2. Now that you have used the post office for mobile communication what is the next thing you can use it for - CABLE TELEVISION.
We all know that eventually the cable television will be digitised - DTH/IPTV/etc. The penetration of this space is very small (~30mn homes in india have DTH/IPTV n that too primarily metros; total cable homes ~140mn). These companies if they want to expand will obviously have to enter interior india and the costs will be big for them given that they either loss making currently or marginally profitable if at all. The companies can use the post office to set shop in each district thereby reducing their costs and expanding at the same time. Again the same logic as of mobile companies is applicable here as well.
3. FINANCE INCLUSION - The Reserve Bank of India has one of its motto of financial inclusion (basically get most people of the country get a bank account and use a banking services). I will not get into the reason as to why they have it as their motto.
Most commercial banks (eg. ICICI, HDFC, Kotak, Dhanlaxmi, Federal, etc) don't want to pursue this goal rigorously because it costs them money. They will need to set up bank branches, hire people and maintain bank records. And the commensurate returns are obviously not enough and that's why most banks if you have noticed need you to maintain a minimum deposit balance.
The post office would be the government/RBI's best bet to execute financial inclusion. We/I have always seen post office people in interiors delivering bank drafts n being friendly to the local people. Now, I am not saying a bank should open a full fledged services at the post office because its unfeasible.
Here we can use the concept of business correspondent (BC - I have not thought of this but have read it in the papers as a model being proposed by various concerned parties). The banks will use one of their employees of that particular geography to act as their front who will deliver the services. The idea suggested is that he/she will carry a small hand held machine (i guess something similar to credit card swiping equipment). This will be point of interconnection between the banks n its client.
The banks an tie-up with the post office and make the postal guy as the BC. The local post office can be the central point wherein the transactions can be carried out. The post office obviously has multiple people and these can be hired as BC as well. The only hitch this idea has is which bank should the local post office represent without being biased. At the end of the day the local post man will be the front end and hence he can always be swayed. I guess the only way to get out of this dilemma is that individual bank's have one representative each at the post office trying to sell their products with the postman as the executioner.
I know the idea needs more structuring and restructuring but I am 100% sure it will work.
I am game for anyone to come up with better ideas and improvements to my ideas. Thanks
