End of an Era: 160-year-old telegram service in India to close down on July 15

New Delhi: After 162 years of connecting people, India is now set to disband the world's last major telegram service and its legions of cycle-borne postmen. With the service made redundant by a technological revolution, the final message will be sent next Monday, July 15. In the days before mobile phones and the Internet, the telegram network was the main form of communication, with 20 million messages dispatched from India in 1947 alone. In 2012, the number of telegrams dwindled to 40,000 and most of them were by Indian government departments conveying administrative messages to remote parts of the country. The history of telegram in the country dates back to 1850 when the first telegraph message was transmitted between Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Diamond Harbour, a distance of about 40 km. India's first telegraph lines were laid by British rulers in 1851 in the colonial capital of Kolkata, stretching about 40 kilometres down the Hoogly River to a key harbour on the Bay of Bengal. Known locally as the "Taar" (wire), the service is also remembered for helping the British trading conglomerate the East India Company maintain its political and military domination of the region. When Indian troops rebelled in 1857, sparking a widespread uprising against colonial rule, the telegram is credited with playing a crucial rule in helping British forces mobilise and regain control. Lord Dalhousie, who was the then Governor of India, conceded that it proved game changer in suppressing Indian protest in 1857. In October 1947, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had also sent a 163 words telegram to the then British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, surmising India's views on Kashmir. Over the past decade, several countries have phased out telegram services but Russia, Germany and Canada are still running the services, according to a report in The Telegraph. At their peak in 1985, 60 million telegrams were being sent and received a year in India from 45,000 offices. Today, only 75 offices exist, though they are located in each of India's 671 districts through franchises. And an industry that once employed 12,500 people, today has only 998 workers. When the telegraph offices close this month, the workers will be absorbed into other departments in the communications ministry.