NEW DELHI. INDIA, July 31, 2016 (Times of India): Please remove your shoes before entering the room, comes the unusual request from a senior official at the Rail Mail Service (RMS) Bhawan near Delhi’s Kashmere Gate. The room in question was unremarkable until recently, when it became a reliquary for bottled Ganga. The river’s water has seemingly sanctified an otherwise utilitarian space whose contents have thus far been courier packages and daily mail.
Just weeks after Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad promised to have Ganga water delivered to people’s doorsteps via the Indian postal service, the scheme has become a hit not just in the national capital, but also in other states like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. It is the first end-to-end product operation handled by India Post. Since the day of its inception in the first week of July, the RMS Bhawan has dispatched over 49,000 bottles to 22 postal circles in the country.
“It is a very systematic procedure. Mussoorie Express gets the water from the Ganga in Rishikesh, and at times from Gangotri. Around 7-8 people from the Rishikesh post office collect the water directly from the river. They send it to us in cans with a capacity of 20 litres each. Overnight, the train reaches New Delhi. Our men go and collect it early morning and bring it to RMS Bhawan,” adds the official. Once it reaches RMS Bhawan, the water is treated in two rooms, cleared of sediment, and then packaged. “You can drink it of course, it is holy after all. But we want to make sure that there are no unwanted particles, like soil or little stones, in it. It comes straight from the river which is why we filter it properly,” says the official.