In the early years of independent India, resource mobilisation was crucial for the planned development of the country. The Indian postal system, through strategic messaging and accessible financial services, played a largely overlooked but significant role in mobilising small savings from millions of citizens, contributing to the country’s socioeconomic development.
The story begins with a key objective of economic planning—mobilising resources by improving the rate of saving. This required a behavioural change through persuasion as our planners operated within a democratic setting. The first Five-Year Plan noted that the proportion of national income saved depends upon psychological and institutional factors, with social customs and habits playing a decisive role in determining the rates of savings attained.
Given the limited reach of mass media, the postal network emerged as one of the preferred channels for government propaganda. In the first few decades after Independence, the Indian Posts & Telegraphs Department (P&T) came into contact with people more frequently than most other government departments. By the late 1960s, the P&T was delivering mail to three lakh villages every day and six lakh villages once a week, while the Post Office Savings Bank became one of the largest financial institutions in the country, and the Postal Life Insurance emerged as a major life insurer.
Consequently, the government relied upon the P&T to both disseminate the message about the need to save and facilitate savings. However, standard accounts of planning in independent India often overlook the role of supporting institutions such as the P&T.
Post Office Savings Bank Centenary (1982) | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Postal Life Insurance Centenary (1984) | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Postal Life Insurance Quasquicentennial (2009) | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Saving for the nation
In 1971, the brochure of the commemorative postage stamp on World Thrift Day noted that the Government of India had set up the National Savings Central Bureau in Shimla in October 1943 “to counteract the inflationary trends caused in the economy during the Second World War and to collect funds to finance the war efforts.” However, as the brochure of the stamp on the National Savings Organization (NSO) issued in 1998 notes, this drive “did not gain momentum as the people were not enthusiastic about financing an alien war”.
The government of newly independent India encouraged saving by portraying it as a patriotic act and a contribution to nation-building. For instance, the information brochure of the stamp on World Thrift Day represented savings as “a virtue and a discipline for every citizen” that would not only help the saver but also the country in finding resources for various nation-building schemes to achieve sustained growth of national income and to combat inflationary trends.
The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru quoted in the brochure of the stamp on the NSO, argued that a movement to promote savings was important because every person “who participates in this campaign and adds to the savings not only helps in fulfilment of our [plans]… but also becomes in a sense a sharer in it”.
The government reorganised the savings movement in 1948 and established the NSO headquartered in Nagpur for “mopping up the surplus money for nation-building activities...”. Even before the First Five Year Plan was launched, the National Savings Commissioner had begun to exhort citizens to make their “3-point savings plan”. The NSO stamp’s brochure noted that the organisation mobilised Rs. 243 crore in the first Five-Year Plan (1951-56), which formed a part of plan finance of the Union government, of which three fourths were allocated to the States as loans repayable in 25 years to finance their development projects.
A telegram sent from Calcutta to Akhaura (East Pakistan) in January 1948 featuring the message Save Safely for the Future Buy National Savings Certificates | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Some of the earliest advertisements appealing to citizens to “Save Safely for the Future” and “Buy National Savings Certificates” were seen on telegrams even before the NSO was established. Around this time, hundreds of thousands of letters and postcards also began to be cancelled with the slogan “Buy National Savings Certificates”. Such cancellations/postmarks can be found on letters and postcards mailed as late as 1979. Post offices were also the institutions from which people bought National Savings Certificates.
A postcard mailed from Delhi to Sambhar Lake in 1953 featuring the slogan Buy National Savings Certificates | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
A postcard mailed from Ahmedabad to Etawah in March 1972 featuring a bi-lingual slogan on the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB): P.O.S.B. The People’s Bank | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
During the Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61), slogans such as “National Savings for National Development” began to feature on postal stationery issued by different government departments and remained in circulation until the mid-1970s.
An envelope featuring the slogan National Savings for National Development mailed from Bharatpur to Karauli in May 1961. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Saving the nation
In the run-up to the war with China, the Nehru government urged citizens to save more “to finance production and meet the increasing cost on national defence”. A postmark of this period exhorted citizens to contribute generously for national security.
An envelope mailed from Jaipur to Sambhar Lake in 1963 featuring the message Contribute Generously for National Security affixed at both the dispatch as well delivery post offices. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
In the mid-1960s, the Bank of India issued envelopes with the message “They also FIGHT who WORK and SAVE”. In the early 1970s, government departments issued postal stationery with the message “Save to Defend”.
Fragment of a Bank of India envelope mailed from Bombay to Surat in 1964 | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Feeding the nation
In 1971, the P&T issued a stamp to commemorate World Thrift Day. Its brochure emphasized the important role the Post Office Savings Bank, with more than a lakh branches and 2.4 crore depositors, played in making banking accessible in rural India amidst the growing volume of cash transactions necessitated by the Green Revolution. The brochure added “in the context of the green revolution and the growing rural prosperity, the Post Office Savings Bank is playing a vital role, in mopping up the surplus money for nation-building activities”.
First day cover of the stamp on the World Thrift Day (1971) | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Later in this decade, slogans such as “Apni alp bachat se desh ki samriddhi mein yog dijiye, aaj ki bachat kal ki samriddhi (Contribute to the country’s prosperity with your small savings, today’s savings tomorrow’s prosperity)” featured on government postal stationery. Nationalised banks also contributed to the campaign to promote savings in the 1970s. Advertisements on inland letter cards sponsored by the Bank of India in 1976 carried the slogan “Bachat kijiye; apni aur desh ki unnati ke liye. (Save for the progress of yourself and the country)”.
“Saving Serves the Nation–Save with Bank of Maharashtra” and “Save with UCO Bank–Help implement the 20-point Economic Programme” were other advertisements on inland letter cards sponsored in 1976.
Saving for the family
In the mid-1970s, there was a confluence of propaganda on savings, family planning, and the Green Revolution in the postal space in response to the growing concern over rapid population growth amidst persistent shortages. But once aggregate shortages began to ease and the threat of overt war diminished, the earlier slogans such as “Desh aur parivaar ki samriddhi ke liye bachat karein (Save for the prosperity of the country and family)” and “Bachat aapke parivar aur desh ke hit mein avashyak hai (Saving is necessary in the interest of your family and the country)” became redundant. And the propaganda in the postal media began to emphasize the importance of saving for children and the family.
In the 1970s, in parts of Rajasthan, government postal stationery carried three messages on savings, family planning, and the official language: Raashtriya bachat patra kharidkar sukhi bhavishya banaiye tatha achchha byaaz kamaaiye (Buy National Savings Certificates to earn a good interest and build a happy future); Chhota parivar sukhi parivar (Small family, happy family); and Hindi zyada se zyada kaam mein laayen (Use Hindi as much as possible). In the late 1970s, the postal stationery of government departments carried slogans such as “Save for your children’s future”.
An envelope with messages on Hindi, family planning and small savings mailed from Jaipur to Jodhpur in 1971 | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
In the early 1980s, the State Bank of India issued envelopes with the slogan “Maṅgalmaya bhaviṣya ke liye parivāra sīmit rakhiye aur state bank mein bachat kījiye (For a happy future, limit family and save in State Bank).” Passbooks of the Bank of India and Union Bank of India issued in the 1980s featured bilingual family planning messages on the back cover.
A golden jubilee
First Day Cover of the Stamp on the Golden Jubilee of the National Savings Organisation (1998) | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
The last major stamp on savings was issued in 1998, commemorating the golden jubilee of the National Savings Organization (NSO), which “symbolised collective thrift in the march of the nation”. Its brochure presented the common man as a “partner in the construction of the nation” and noted that the NSO engaged 4.8 crore small savers and mobilised Rs. 50,000 crores of savings during the Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-97).
This stamp effectively marked the end of one of the most sustained, creative, and successful campaigns waged by the government through the postal network over five decades, during which the gross domestic saving accounted for by the household sector increased from 6.7 per cent in 1950-51 to 22.1 per cent in 1999-2000 of the national income.
Propaganda on savings faded out after the liberalisation of the economy as foreign exchange reserves improved and the state stepped back from its central role in the economy. Around this time, the propaganda on family planning and the Green Revolution through postal media also receded into the background.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, there was a general shift in the philatelic imagination of the state, with personalities and identity politics increasingly occupying the centre stage.
But that’s a story for another day.
Vikas Kumar teaches economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and is the author of Numbers as Political Allies: The Census in Jammu and Kashmir (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
