Smooth landing

Time of India

07-07-2025

India Post & other GOI depts can easily earn good money, by monetising their land & buildings
It's a bad time to be in the mail business. Denmark is removing all letter boxes because the volume of personal mail has fallen 90% since 2000. UK's 500-year-old Royal Mail was sold to a Czech billionaire last year, because it's not popular anymore. From a peak of 20bn letters per year in 2004, it came down to 7bn in 2024. US Postal Service lost $9.5bn last year, up from $6.5bn in 2023. With 1.65L post offices, India Post is the largest mail carrier in the world, and its losses aren't insignificant either. But scrapping it is not an option as 90% of post offices serve rural locations, and remote or tribal areas.
Govt has been trying to boost revenue by turning India Post into a logistics firm – delivering Amazon packages in remote areas, for example. But monetising the larger post offices, especially the 15,823 in urban areas, could also improve finances. As communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told TOI in an interview: 'You can have the post office on the ground floor and build the whole building and lease out space.' It's a timely idea, not only for the department but also private businesses and institutions scouting for leasable premises in India's fast-growing cities. As Scindia said, India Post is already examining its paperwork to identify post offices that could be developed first, and other govt departments should follow its lead.
GOI is the largest landowner in India, possessing some 15,500 sq km – more than 10 times the area of Delhi. Indian Railways alone owns at least 4,900 sq km of land. The defence ministry reportedly owns about 50% more. And there are dozens of other departments with large landholdings. Most of this land cannot be commercially developed, of course, but if even 1% can, we're talking 155 sq km – a quarter of Mumbai. Niti Aayog has pointed out that India's public sector is sitting on an inventory of 'underutilised land assets'. Consider that railways has leased out only 88 sq km or less than 2% of its land bank for passenger and cargo facilities, and commercial development. Niti's advice, under the National Monetisation Pipeline, is to 'own, hold, manage and monetise' land and building assets of GOI-owned public sector enterprises. This strategy can not only trim losses, but also help improve passenger experience in trains and stations, and ensure India's letter boxes don't go the way of the pay phone.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.