The Koneripatti post office, and (below) a bunch of undelivered letters found near the village. Pictures by Shiva

Salem (Tamil Nadu), Jan. 6: Scores of people in six villages have missed out on jobs, interviews, pension and college admissions for at least two years because their lone postman junked their mail.

The tragedy of Koneripatti and neighbouring hamlets has underlined how crucial a role the post office still plays in the lives of Indians in an age of email and cellphones.

Postal authorities have delivered 19 registered letters and 1,284 ordinary letters since the scandal broke last month at Koneripatti sub-post office, a bumpy 52km ride from this steel town.

Postman Paramasivam, while renovating his home in Ponnampalayam village, had carelessly thrown out one of the sacks in which he hid the mail.

A painfully thin boy in shorts was weeping inconsolably at a thatched shed at Ponnampalayam on December 24. “My mother has lost a precious job,” he whimpered.

The letter, stained by water and turned yellow by dirt, was posted by the revenue department office in nearby Sankagiri on April 3. It summoned Indira, a woman in her late 20s, to an interview for the village assistant’s post and asked her to bring her high-school certificates.

“My son found it among the dumped letters this morning,” Indira said.

“It’s not the usual kind of postal delay — we suffered because of one man,” a relative said.

Some of the undelivered letters relate to old-age pension, some are telephone bills or reminders to labourers to renew membership of a board without which they cannot receive state welfare. Many are arrears notices from banks, private hire-purchase firms and insurance companies.

Farmer Ponnusamy opened a soiled envelope to find a note from the Nedunkulam cooperative bank saying if he didn’t pay his arrears with interest by October 2006, the jewels he had deposited would be auctioned.

K. Uthirasamy of Ponnampalayam missed a September 2007 interview with the Murugappa Group in Chennai for a trainee’s job.

“Perhaps if you call them and explain about this errant postman, they might consider giving you another chance,” an elder advised the shell-shocked distance-learning student.

Paramasivam, suspended by the authorities and facing further action once a departmental probe ends, has gone into hiding after explaining he was overworked.

The man in his fifties has been the only postman for years at the sub-post office, housed in a tiled-roof, World War II-era building among green fields. He doubled as its sub-postmaster from January 2006 till last October before a woman sub-postmaster was appointed.

A group of boys playing near his home had found the abandoned sack. They carried away a handful of letters, delivering some at addresses they knew.

Postal department officials later found two more sackloads in the house. A senior official camped in the area for several days, distributing the old mail with the help of postmen brought from a nearby post office.

One of the recipients was C. Murugesan, who has missed his February 2007 interview with the Union HRD ministry’s Board of Apprenticeship Training, Chennai. “We found the letter in one of the sacks,” his mother Pappathi wept.

A State Bank of India ATM card, sent by registered post to Ananda Kumar of Kombukadu in July, was delivered at the end of December although the post office seal shows it reached Koneripatti in good time.

Knots of villagers huddled together, reading out their letters loudly as tears streamed down their cheeks.

The postal official said the problem started after January 2006 but some villagers claimed they had not received any letters for three years.

“It seems Paramasivam had a sadistic streak. Being the only sarkari hand in this village, he probably didn’t want anyone else to get a government job, or our children to rise socially with better education,” alleged Arumugam, a panchayat member at Koneripatti.

“Paramasivam once told a neighbour’s son, ‘Go and work in the fields, why do you need to study?’”

“Normally we learn about such lapses quickly enough, but here it seems to have been kept under wraps,” the postal official said. He said Paramasivam belonged to a powerful caste.

And sure enough, the postman has a few defenders, too. Some villagers said he delivered most of the money orders and pension documents. Others alleged he favoured a select group of households.

“You cannot really blame an overburdened man who has been working in the department for 21 years,” said P.A. Murugesan, a well-to-do farmer in Koneripatti.

“It’s no joke having to pedal 15km every day on his old bicycle across a semi-hilly terrain.”

Murugesan prefers to blame the postal department for failing to appoint a sub-postmaster for nearly two years. “Besides, I am not aware of anyone missing out on any major death news since there are cellphones now.”

But India’s telecom revolution couldn’t prevent one man from turning pin code 637107 into no-man’s-land for life’s vital business.