By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Increasing dependence on emails and social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut especially among youngsters has raised levels of concern from a very unusual institution.
The Department of Posts and Telegraphs, Government of India.
The department is concerned that more and more youngsters are no longer used to writing letters. They send emails and pen friends are replaced by facebook friends.
“The only time that students resort to the old form of written letters is during exams, that too, because it is a part of their curriculum”, a reliable source from the department of posts told The Shillong Times.
“We are now forced to come up with new ideas and are thinking what to do next to lure people into writing again,” the source said adding media plays a crucial role in this.
She also said that the department cannot increase the rates of postcards, inland letters since they have to see the affordability of the commoners, too.
Informing that the postal department has earlier tried various ways by introducing Competition Postcards, Meghdoot Postcards, specialized Inland letters and more but nothing worked. It has been learnt that increasing dependence on internet and mobile telephony services, has rather affected the mail services.
The source, a mother herself, said that guardians are also to be blamed for this since they have to change the trend in their children.
Another official from the postal department said that practical life has come to a standstill since such letter writing actually bridges the mental gap that no social networking sites can provide. “That romanticism, the feelings that is there in a letter with the writer’s handwriting, how can one feel that over the internet,” said the official adding the personal touch of handwriting is not there anymore.
Meanwhile parents too, acknowledged the fact that increasing dependence on computers has taken toll on this “lost” mode of communication and letter writing is more or less confined academically.
“It is imperative to inculcate this habit of letter writing since there is a difference between the English that we use in writing messages, emails to that of letters,” said a guardian.
But there are many who said that in most cases letter remains the safe mode of communication and more so in remote areas where the postal department is doing yeoman service.