Below video shows how the
Railway Mail Service (RMS) staffs bottling the Gangajal for dispatching to
various Post Offices across the country.
Please remove your shoes
before entering the room,' comes the unusual request from a senior official at
the Rail Mail Service (RMS) Bhawan near Delhi's Kashmere Gate. The room in
question was unremarkable until recently, when it became a reliquary for
bottled Ganga. The river's water has seemingly sanctified an otherwise
utilitarian space whose contents have thus far been courier packages and daily
mail.
Just weeks after Union
minister Ravi Shankar Prasad promised to have Ganga water+ delivered to
people's doorsteps via the Indian postal service, the scheme has become a hit
not just in the national capital, but also in other states like Rajasthan,
Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Uttar
Pradesh. It is the first end-to-end product operation handled by India Post.
Since the day of its
inception in the first week of July , the RMS Bhawan has dispatched over 49,000
bottles to 22 postal circles in the country . "It's amazing how the
bottles are gone within minutes.Kolkata, for one, saw around 20 bottles sold
out in no time," beams the official.Ironically , the maximum demand is
from states like Uttarakhand and West Bengal, which have the Ganga flowing
through.
The Bhawan gets a daily
supply of Gangajal.+ The amount varies, says the official, but the flow never
stops.
"It is a very
systematic procedure.Mussoorie Express gets the water from the Ganga in
Rishikesh, and at times from Gangotri. Around 7-8 people from the Rishikesh
post office collect the water directly from the river. They send it to us in cans
with a capacity of 20 litres each. Overnight, the train reaches New Delhi. Our
men go and collect it early morning and bring it to RMS Bhawan," adds the
official.
Once it reaches RMS
Bhawan, the water is treated in two rooms, cleared of sediment, and then
packaged. "You can drink it of course, it is holy after all. But we want
to make sure that there are no unwanted particles, like soil or little stones,
in it. It comes straight from the river which is why we filter it
properly," says the official. There are two rules to be followed in these
two rooms: no shoes and no bare hands.
He adds that the Bhawan
gets very little water from Gangotri, but a regular supply from Rishikesh has
made the scheme a success; 43,000 of the 49,000 bottles sold till date come
from there. The bottles with water from Rishikesh cost Rs 15 and Rs 22 for 200
ml and 500 ml respectively. The ones from Gangotri are priced at Rs 25 and Rs
35 respectively . Online, both sell at Rs 101 and Rs 151 respectively. For now,
there's not much profit in it, just piety . "If one calculates the cost of
filtering and packaging each bottle, there would probably be a profit of margin
of Re 1," adds the official.
The counter at the Sansad
Marg head post office in Delhi has two bottles on display, to assure customers
they're at the right place. Senior postmaster Roop Chand says there are 12 post
offices in Delhi, including this one, that sell the bottles.
"I just sold five 500
ml bottles," says a smiling Rajkumari, as she opens her hardbound register
to jot down details of the day's sales. She is soon joined by Renu Chhabra, who
handles the online sale of the holy water and guides us to a tiny room where
three women are watching the website for online orders. "We can't call
distribution of Gangajal part of ecommerce. It's just making sure everyone gets
a part of our culture at their doorsteps," says postmaster Chand.
Many devout families are
grateful for the scheme. "I used to go to Rishikesh to get Gangajal. Now
that it's readily available, it saves me the trip," says Rajesh from New
Delhi.
At the launch of the
scheme, minister Prasad had said it was going to feed the cultural needs of
Indians. If the numbers so far are anything to go by , he was probably right.
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