Write a detailed note on various facilities offered by the Indian Postal Department.

By Harshvardhan, the Subject Matter Expert at Edumarz

Solution: Indian post and telegraph department provides various postal services across India. For providing these services the whole country has been divided into 22 postal circles. These circles manage the day-to-day functioning of the various head post offices, sub-post offices and branch post offices. Through their regional and divisional level arrangements, the various facilities provided by the postal department are broadly categorised into:

1. Financial facilities: These facilities are provided through the post office’s savings schemes like Public Provident Fund (PPF), Kisan Vikas Patra, and National Saving Certificates in addition to normal retail banking functions of monthly income schemes, recurring deposits, savings account, time deposits and money order facility.
2. Mail facilities: Mail services consist of parcel facilities that are the transmission of articles from one place to another; registration facility to provide security of the transmitted articles and insurance facility to provide insurance cover for all risks in the course of transmission by post. 

The postal department also offers allied facilities of the following types:

1. Greeting post — A range of delightful greeting cards for every occasion.
2. Media post — An innovative and effective vehicle for Indian corporates to advertise their brand through postcards, envelopes, aerogrammes, telegrams,

and also through letterboxes.

3. Direct post is for direct advertising. It can be both addressed as well as unaddressed.
4. International Money Transfer through collaboration with Western Union financial services, The  USA, which enables remittance of money from 185 countries to India.
5.  Passport facilities — A unique partnership with the ministry of external affairs for facilitating passport application.
6. Speed Post: It has over 1000 destinations in India and links with 97 major countries across the globe.

7. e-bill post is the latest offering of the department to collect bill payments across the counter for BSNL and Bharti Airtel.