Pin Code @ 50 Years

India Post introduced the six digit postal index number (PIN) code on 15 August 1972, the day when the silver jubilee of India’s independence was celebrated. The idea was to give a unique identity to all physical addresses in the country in terms of the distribution jurisdiction of post offices. The code was expected to help circumvent the challenge of wrong address and ensure accurate and speedy delivery by post offices. Now is the time to introspect whether this system has been successful in achieving its objective in the last 50 years.

Postal code, which is known differently in different countries. A postcode, zip code, etc., is an alpha-numeric or numeric number included in a postal address for easy identification of the sorting-district and delivery post office of the addressee. Codes were introduced nationwide in Germany in 1944, Singapore (1950), Argentina (1958), US (1963), Switzerland (1964), India (1972) and UK (1974). The introduction of sorting machines in the West in the 1960s also necessitated the introduction of codes because the machines could not easily read the addressee’s post office when described in writing. The Universal Postal Union says that 160 countries in the world have introduced postal codes so far.

speed up sorting

Post codes revolutionized the system of manual mail sorting because sorters did not need to remember the locations of thousands of post offices. To what extent did the pin codes succeed in speeding up the sorting in India? It is interesting that even after five decades, a large number of mails in India are not pin coded. The government tried to educate citizens to write the pin code of the addressee on the mail. It was successful to some extent. Until about a decade ago, billers for government offices and utility services were the biggest offenders. In cities such as Delhi and Kolkata, where the sorting is done by machines, mail without a PIN code must be separately coded before being put into the sorting machine, which can lead to delays in processing at the sorting centres.

Recently, the proportion of pin-coded mail began to improve in India after the introduction of computerized billing by utility service providers and KYC norms by banks, where providing complete and accurate addresses is mandatory. Now new challenges have emerged. Personal mail has almost disappeared after the revolution of mobile telephony in the last two decades. What is left with the postal system are documents and e-commerce parcels where there is stiff competition from couriers. Is the current structure of PIN codes capable of meeting that challenge?

Pin code helps to carry a piece of mail to the post office of the recipient. The post office’s delivery jurisdiction is generally divided into beets and a postman is appointed to each bete. Beat sorting is done manually in post offices in India.

Can we think of integrating beat code with six digit pin code? In that case the pin code will not only identify the post office of the addressee but will also identify the beat concerned. If the post office provides the mobile number of the deliverer of the beat, the citizens can also leave instructions to him regarding the facility to take delivery.

machines to the rescue

Nowadays letter sorting machines, flat sorting machines (packet handling) and parcel sorting machines have tremendous potential to sort in a day. With the dwindling volume of individual mail, it is not impossible to sort all incoming mail and shipments to a circle or regional hub, making the concept of sorting-district redundant. Even beat-sorting, which is done at the post office level, can be done at the circle hub, if the beat code is integrated with the pin code.

The logistics system associated with processing e-commerce goods is intrinsically different from handling personal mail. A postman used to take hundred postage pieces for delivery on his beat by cycle. But it needs a vehicle for delivery of small number of e-commerce parcels. For this we need to centralize parcel distribution centers and mechanize beats. It may also call for rationalization of pin codes in the long run.

The system of postal codes introduced 50 years ago may not be operationally relevant in the new role of the post office. Is India Post ready to take on that challenge? Although the code was originally designed to help with postal operations, today it is used by couriers, e-commerce players, and various other service providers as a means of local identification of an individual. This aspect also needs to be kept in mind before rationalizing the PIN codes.

Gautam Bhattacharya is an independent commentator on socio-economic issues and a former civil servant.