With social media and smartphones providing immediate communications, the postcard and the telegram are nearly out of date. But in India’s jap state of Odisha, police are working laborious to protect a good older follow – provider pigeons.

Used to hold messages between stations in distant areas and communicate with police items on the transfer, the police pigeons of Odisha additionally proved to be the one reliable methodology of communication throughout devastating floods in 1982 and a 1999 super-cyclone that precipitated widespread destruction within the coastal state. Indeed, the handlers say pigeon publish helped save many lives.

Anil Dhir, from the Indian National Trust of Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach), works with police to run the service, which was launched in 1946. The space had no wi-fi or phone hyperlinks, so the state was given 200 Belgian homing pigeons by the military as a communications experiment.

Dhir claims that Odisha has “the only existing pigeon carrier service in the world, and a unique example of an ancient tradition being kept alive in modern times”. He provides: “India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, used the service to send a message to state officials in Cuttack from Sambalpur [south Odisha] on 13 April 1948. The short message read: “The arrangements for the public meeting should not be such as to separate the speaker from the audience in Cuttack.”

Dhir says Belgian pigeons are chosen primarily for his or her means to fly lengthy distances (as much as 24km or 15 miles) in simply 15-25 minutes and their longevity – they stay as much as 20 years.

“Currently, about 155 such pigeons are under police care. We have two lofts in Cuttack and one at a police training college in Angul, central Odisha.”

Three officers take care of the combo of racing, provider and homing pigeons, that are taught to ship three forms of providers: static (a method), boomerang (two means) and cellular (utilized by police items on the transfer to speak with headquarters). The messages are written on onion paper, inserted right into a plastic capsule and tied to the pigeons’ ft.

Although using pigeons as messengers was first recorded in Eygpt at round 3,000BC, they have been considered first utilized in India within the Sixteenth-century Mughal period. Pigeons got here into their very own throughout wartime, carrying secret messages round navy networks, and have been broadly used in the course of the first and second world wars, delivering messages throughout Europe, India and Burma (now Myanmar).

According to Esha Munshi, birdwatcher and founder of the Feather Library, Ahmedabad, which maintains a feather archive of 120 chicken species, the Belgian pigeons have notably sturdy homing instincts, which make them an ideal alternative for communication. “Homing pigeons have been used for centuries as messengers. Their instinct to zero in on a geographical location based on the sun’s direction and the Earth’s magnetic field is unparalleled.

“They are similar to the passenger pigeons – a now extinct species – that were extensively used in the US to carry messages during war,” she says.

The state authorities spends £4,900 a yr for the maintenance of the pigeons and salaries of the workers. One of the police handlers says: “The pigeons’ training begins when they are five to six weeks old. These birds can fly up to 500 miles at a stretch with a speed of 55kph, depending on the weather.

“They are allowed to fly small distances of 3-5kms initially. They are taught to recognise the locality and made to practise different types of services. Once trained, their accuracy in route mapping remains intact for decades.

“The pigeons are very intelligent and recognise the handler’s voice, which makes their management easier. I know the birds individually and they also recognise us from our voices,” he provides.

But the service is now seen as outdated and dear, and is beneath menace. The pigeons are more and more used just for ceremonial functions equivalent to Independence Day parades. The police handler, who doesn’t wish to be named, says: “Many government officials view the ‘pigeongram’ as a waste of resources. There’s increasing talk of the service being disbanded. However, every time this happens, there’s a huge public outcry.”

Dhir says he’s excited a couple of ceremonial flight of 60 pigeons deliberate by Intach and Odisha police from Bhubaneshwar to Cuttack. “It’ll be attended by the public and students who will get to witness this charming service. It’s a lot of effort but our sincere aim is to keep this tradition alive for as long as possible. It’s all about cultural preservation.”