Indian telegram service stopped stop - Financial Times

At Mumbai's historic Central Telegraph Office, where generations of Indians once went to dispatch news of births, deaths, and weddings to family and friends across town or across the country, the counters for telegram services are ominously empty. From a vital tool for British officers in colonial India to the primary public means of cross-country communication in the post-independence years, the telegram in India has finally been rendered redundant by the country's mobile phone revolution. This week, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the state-owned telecom company, announced it was closing its telegram service, with the last transmission on July 15. The news has triggered a wave of nostalgia and, oddly, telegrams. "As a kid my parents would get telegrams from their relatives and they were harbingers of doom or announced a joyous occasion," said magazine editor Prasad Ramamurthy, 37, as he prepared to visit the telegraph office. "They have a great amount of nostalgic value and I decided I would send myself a telegram and keep it as a collectable, just as you would a newspaper with a landmark headline." The telegram first arrived in India in 1850, six years after Samuel Morse sent his first message, with the installation of a line from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour that was used by the British East India Company. Telegraph became a vital tool for the British to manage the empire. But even in the decades after India's independence, the 19th-century telegraph technology remained popular with the public, due to the paucity of telephones, which could take more than a decade to obtain from the state-run telecom monopolies. R.D. Ram, the supervisor at New Delhi's Central Telegraph Office estimates even a decade ago, the office's staff of 3,000 people – including hundreds of messengers – handled a flow of around 10,000 ingoing and outgoing telegrams each day. Today, a sign lists the numbered codes for once popular telegram messages, including best wishes for upcoming exams, functions, weddings, elections – and religious festivals. "May heavens choicest blessings be showered on the young couple," reads one option. The affection you get when you receive something in writing in a telegram is different. You can't compare it to a phone call or an SMS - Anil Desmukh, telegraph service worker for 33 years But the Indian mobile phone and internet revolution of the last decade has seen telegrams fall from public favour. Today, India's 1.3bn people have around 900m mobile phone connections, though the actual number of separate users is thought to be between 500m and 600m. BSNL's service is now not a classic telegraph wire, but an internet-based message transmission system. Clerks in Mumbai and New Delhi say that most telegrams today are sent by lawyers or banks when they need legal proof of receipt is required, or by the Indian government itself, which still relies on telegrams for communication between its many entities. Anil Desmukh, 55, who has worked for the telegraph service for 33 years, believes telegrams are still relevant to the public. "The affection you get when you receive something in writing in a telegram is different," he says. "You can't compare it to the value of a phone call or an SMS." The telegram also apparently has its uses for those who prefer to avoid certain telephone calls. On Friday, Ajay Pal, a 42-year-old employee of a New Delhi construction company, was dispatched to send a telegram on behalf of his boss. "I am busy in office and unable to take telephone calls," the message read. "I wish you all success in your future endeavours." Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGbK9KQMcQKgs9OhV3bWMpmp8HQ4g&url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/36c049ac-d4f0-11e2-b4d7-00144feab7de.html

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