Visit to General Post office

Purpose of Field trip:

• Understand the different systems inside GPO
• Understand how the GPO is connected to the various other systems of Bangalore
• Understand the form, function, needs, and challenges of the GPO as a system also the changes that the GPO has gone through during all these years.
• Understand how these changes in the system happen to cater to the needs of the community.
• Understanding how the systems like GPO, BWSSB, BMTC in a city by large are interconnected and affect the community.

Field Trip to GPO

On the way to the General Post-office students made a lot of connection in terms of systems in Bangalore. With the previous discussions and after the study of systems in “NEEV “they were able to identify the Systems on a larger level. They saw BWSSB water supply tankers, BSNL for managing communication, they identified the BBMP for picking up the garbage in the City, they also identified the banking Systems on the way like SBI, ICICI, and the Traffic management office.

They also shared about how fire station, the police station is also a system and they provide services to the community.

Inside the GPO the students saw the sorting department where the mails received were being sorted and separated as per the pin code and area. There were postmen for each area who would pick up the posts from there and go around distributing it.

The mail after being dropped in the letterboxes is picked up and sent to this department for sorting and entry into the system.

Students came to know that earlier when there was no computer and the entry of the mails received was done manually in a register, it was a tedious process. With the use of technology, the mails can be tracked quickly and the status of its delivery or non-delivery can be shared with the customer.

The major challenge the GPO faces is with the incorrect pin codes or addresses which leads to confusion and because of which the mails are not delivered to its intended recipient.

Inside the GPO there were different systems working independently but also interconnected to each other for e.g.: the registered post, the parcel department, the banking services department and the philately department, all working in tandem with each other.

The other connection of systems that students noticed was that the international parcel system inside GPO was using the Air India services for articles to be sent outside the country whereas the ordinary mail services ( within the state or within the country)  was working very closely with the philately department which deals in the collection of stamps.

 Children pointed out that the ordinary mails which are to be dropped in the letterbox also needed stamps to be purchased from the philately department and that they were different stamps for different places for e.g.: outside Karnataka, there were different stamps used and inside Karnataka, there were different stamps to be used.

They were quite surprised to see the banking activities were also part of the GPO. Many of them were not aware of this function of. Students were able to identify the key concepts- form, function, change, and causation to the visit to GPO.

It was good to see children making so many connections and identifying the systems of the city and how the systems are also interdependent to each other. Post field trip a student mentioned about how her father receives his important documents from banks like HDFC through the post. This was a WOW moment where the student established how the banking system is relying on the General Post-office system of the city for delivering the relevant and important documents.