Airliners-India.com

747-237

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-no-more-good-old-taar-stop-379325

India. No more good old 'taar'. Stop

June 13, 2013

The telegram, once the bearer of urgent news - good or bad, will no longer be in existence. The last telegram will be sent on July 15 with the BSNL deciding to discontinue the 160-year-old service from next month.

Silenced by e-mails, SMS and mobile phones, the humble telegram has failed to keep up with the India of the 21st century.

BSNL says, "It's economically not viable for us to carry on the services, following the popularity of mobile phones, email, chat and instant messaging, very few telegrams are sent in the country".

The first telegram was sent in 1850 between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour. Within 3 years, over 6000 kilometres of telegraph lines were placed connecting Calcutta, Peshawar, Mumbai, Chennai, Ooty and Bangalore. But despite several technical upgrades in the telegraph service, it has been dying a slow death.

Satish Kumar, a clerk in the telegraph office in New Delhi tells NDTV, "There are several places where mobile phone services haven't reached. In places like Siachen, lots of soldiers still communicate to their family through telegrams. Plus navy recruitments are still sent through telegram"

For 70-year-old Ramprasad Singh, telegram is how he used to chat with his wife several years ago. Today he sends telegrams to his 10-yr-old grandson in Mumbai, just to keep the tradition alive. It is a bitter-sweet moment for the telegraph staff too - who will now be shifted to the modern day successors like mobile services and broadband services over the next few months.

Nimish · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:03 am Post subject:

I guess this joins the ranks of things like VCRs and so on. No surprise really.
_________________
We miss you Nalini!

flightgearpilot · Member Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 711 Location: VOBL

So.. things actually do get obsoleted in this country? How interesting... Wink

The_Goat · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:14 pm Post subject:

flightgearpilot · Member Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 711 Location: VOBL

Wow!

My remark wasn't too far off the mark! Horses as a means of transport, donkeys as a means of carrying load and oxen as a means of ploughing land still exists intact from several centuries..

PAL@YWG · Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 1:36 am Post subject:

sri_bom · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 2365 Location: Singapore

747-237 · Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 5:14 pm Post subject:

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/last-telegram-sent-to-rahul-gandhi-392218

Last telegram sent to Rahul Gandhi

July 15, 2013

Just 15 minutes to midnight, the last iconic telegram in the capital was sent to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.

The telegram counter closed at 11:45 pm last night and the last message was booked at the counter of Central Telegraph Office (CTO) Janpath by one Ashwani Mishra, who sent messages to Mr Gandhi and Director General of DD news SM Khan.

The revenue collected was Rs. 68,837 as the country bade farewell to the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians.

The total booking was 2,197 of which billing through computer accounted for 1,329 and phone booking 91, a senior telegraph officer said.

CTO had collected forms from many individuals and these will be manually handled, the officer said.

A large number of people, many of them youngsters and first timers, turned up yesterday at four telegraph centres in the Capital which have almost been forgotten in recent years to send a message to their loved ones on the last day of the service.

Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Koklata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public.

It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating.

Nudged out by technology - SMS, emails, mobile phones - the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it.

Though started as a Morse code service, the telegram service evolved gradually with the use of computers. At the time of its death, it had become a web based telegraph mailing service (WBTMS) which used emails to instantly convey message to the other end.

Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones.

For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication.

The_Goat · Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:07 pm Post subject: