INDIAS unique police Carrier Pigeon Service, a crucial communications lifeline throughout more than 50 years of cyclones, floods and drought, is being grounded, making more than 800 of the countrys cheapest and most reliable civil servants redundant. The government in the eastern state of Orissa, one of Indias most under-developed regions, is expected to approve a police recommendation submitted last week that the service, which costs just 125,000 rupees (£1,838) a year to run, should be scrapped. While supporters argue that the so-called P-mail service proved invaluable when all communication networks were knocked out by floods in 1982 and a cyclone in 1999, critics say that radio and email have rendered it obsolete. The pigeon service has outlived its utility with the advent of advanced communication facilities, said N C Padhi, the states director general of police. The pigeons carried only a handful of messages last year, down from about 9,000 in 1990, and their usefulness was drastically declining. At the pigeon service headquarters in Cuttack, B N Das, the superintendent of signals, said the pigeon service still made practical sense two decades ago when there were no VHF radio sets. Now that all police stations in Orissa were on the radio network, however, the winged messengers had been reduced to the status of museum pieces. Related Articles 14 February 2000: Spread of radio switches off political pigeon post 07 Apr 2002 19 May 1997: Pigeon takes wrong turn to Mexico 07 Apr 2002 Indias pigeon service, the only one of its kind in the world, is remarkably sophisticated. The birds, which can fly more than 300 miles at a stretch at an average speed of 50mph, are trained for several different missions. The Static Service allows for one-way communication: pigeons accompanying a police party are sent back to their loft bearing messages in tiny metal cylinders attached to their legs with rubber bands. The Boomerang Service, operated by better-trained recruits, offers a two-way exchange of messages. The birds fly to a police station or an outpost, feed from a wooden box stacked with grain, and then make the return journey home with their message. The service was pioneered in southern Orissas mountainous Koraput district in 1946, a year before Indian independence, on an experimental basis. The first carrier pigeons were procured from the army to establish communications with areas that had neither wireless nor telephone links. The service proved its worth two years later when a pigeon carried an urgent message for the countrys first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, from Sambalpur to Cuttack, taking five hours to cover a distance of more than 150 miles. Thereafter P-mail linked most of Orissas 732 police stations and outposts in 30 districts, many of them sparsely populated in underdeveloped tribal regions. By the mid-1980s, however, the pigeon service was declining as technology improved. The redundant pigeons, which live for up to 20 years, are now destined to be given to the states wildlife department. Supporters of the pigeon service emphasise its cheapness: just a third of the £1,838 budget pays the salaries of the 40 policemen who train and look after the birds in 29 lofts across the state. This is a small price to pay for being the worlds only active pigeon courier service, a police official said. Orissas home secretary, T K Mishra, hopes that a skeleton pigeon service might be maintained to operate between remote police stations in case of a paralysing natural disaster. Machines can fail you, but birds never will, he conceded, while adding that their relevance would be significantly toned down. An ornamental brood of pigeons is also likely to be kept on display at police headquarters in the state capital Bhubaneshwar, 900 miles east of New Delhi, as a symbolic reminder of their historical role.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 08:48:44 +0000
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