Telegram service is no more

Our telegram service comes to an end without even a proper send off. As per the schedule, Sunday July 14th 2013 was the planned date to stop the telegram service in India or last such in the world. But because of the Central BSNL employees strike against not to work on second Saturday, Employees decided to wind up this 163 years old service on Friday. So, if you were among those who sent a telegram between 6 to 7pm on Friday, you were also a part of putting the full stop on a story that started 163 years ago.

On Jun 12, BSNL had announced that it was going to wind up the Telegraphic service because of financial constraints. July 15 was supposed to be the last day for this, but BSNL employees decided to stop the service on Friday. 

News reports that, there was a surge in telegrams in last few days. In a daily average, the Central telegram office sends around 50-60 telegrams.  But soon after the BSNL news came out regarding the disconnection of telegram service, the usage shot up to 150-200 in a day. On Friday, it was 300. 

In India, the first telegraphic communication was transmitted between Alipore and Diamond Harbour, a distance of about 50 km, on November 5, 1850. It would be five years more before the service was opened for the general public. For well over a century, it was the preferred method for announcing births, deaths, emergencies, interview dates and even job joining dates. It took two to three days to arrive, but nothing moved faster in those days.

But our recent technology gear up swallowed this oldest communication in whole and also people were not having enough time to wait for something which takes 3-4days. 

Telegrams reached their peak popularity in the 1920s and 1930s when it was cheaper to send a telegram than placing a long distance telephone call. People would save money by using the word "stop" instead of periods to end sentences because punctuation was extra while the four character word was free.

I rarely remember the word “telegram” in my life, because I never used it to send or receive messages. I was born and brought up in the digital era, so people of my generation have definitely missed this opportunity. But I vaguely remember when I was child, my families and neighborhood people with 40+ or 50+ ages talking about the telegram message which they used to send/receive for various kinds of news. This probably means that current generation has likely grown up in middle-class India without its life being touched by the Ferraris of the snail-mail age. So for current generation, the death news of telegrams will not bring any nostalgic feeling, but just be ordinary news which comes and goes without any hype.

The only opportunities to get to know about these historic services are from some historic movies or reading some historic books. Recently I read a book which actually narrates a real story which happened 50 years back in a small village in kerala, where there was no development. So Books were narrating the usage of historic communication which includes telegrams etc.

But we don’t want to put any tears for the telegram, whose imminent demise in India, following up on similar winding down of the service overseas, represents the inevitable effects of creative destruction triggered by the march of communication technology. The only thing we cannot stop is the advance of communication technology that renders relics obsolete.

But one thing is that "It's amazing it survived this long."

Keep Winning,

Madhu

Nature is reacting…

After reading about the Uttarakhand tragedy, my brothers and sisters cannot even think of the extent of tragedy or destruction that has taken place. But somehow I feel that this is a clear indication that we must consider our environment very carefully, otherwise we can expect these kinds of disasters very frequently from now on. A devastation of this Magnitude will continue to hit us in any form for long period of time. This is a lesson to us to focus on our environment protection and disaster management. 

Considering the rate of consumption of earth today for our daily needs we might require 3 or more earth’s when we reach 2030. Currently we are not in a position to hold these kinds of disaster, but still needs are more. So we should take a step forward to protect our environment at any cost. Responsibility lies in every individual who lives here and also those who want to continue breathing here. 

When I was young, I had enough playground surrounding my house, I was deeply confused which game should I play and where to play? All these kinds of unwanted thinking made my childhood healthier than what our younger generation currently has. My parents used to scold me for one thing, coming late from my favorite playground. I hated it. One of my earliest memories is praying to God that please make me an adult as fast as possible, so that I   can choose what I want. But thinking about today’s world it is something I should not have done. It is always better to be as a child without any responsibility. 

If you take any of India’s states, all are going through very tough situation, either in the form of corruptions or in any other form which keeps bothering people. They cannot be prevented, because our democracy works like this. However what is interesting is, day by day problems are getting accumulated or I don’t know whether hidden problems are coming out. Let us hope for the best.

Now take the case of Uttarakand, it is one of India’s youngest states, but it is going through one of the country’s biggest crises. Utarakkandh has always been sensitive to the vagaries of nature, which cannot be prevented. But what could have been done is the preparation to avoid this kind of devastation. Like Uttarakkandh there are many states which are facing these kinds of nature devastations. But precautions being taken by these states are different, so results are not much worrying.

In Uttarakkandh case, the Government completely failed to control or manages the pilgrims’ inflow which has been increasing in every year by double the amount of previous year count. To accommodate these increasing needs government failed to supply enough infrastructure, so private business people provided or extended the facility by violating the environment laws. This has led to pop up many violated buildings in every corners of Uttarakhand. All these contributed to the death of many people on June 16. Bad thing is State will take another three years to recover from this.  

This is a lesson to all the state governments and also people who are not considering the environment.

Let us pay tribute to all the people who died in this disaster. And also I would like to salute the Indian Army who are volunteering the rescue operation at Uttarakhand.

Keep Winning,
Madoo