Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
Long before places had numbers, a letter in India travelled on foot. Under the Mughals, and in kingdoms before them, runners carried the dak in relays. Each man ran his own stretch and handed the bag on. Many carried a spear, and bells that jangled as they ran. No runner needed to know where a letter would end up. He needed only the road to the next village.
That small fact explains a good deal about the post. It has never needed one person to understand the whole map, only each person to know the next step. For most of its history, the hard part was the last step. Indian addresses were descriptions rather than coordinates: the house behind the Hanuman temple, the second lane after the flour mill. A letter addressed like that arrived because some postman remembered which Gupta family had moved and which lane had been renamed.
The PIN code, introduced on 15 August 1972, tried to take some of that memory out of human heads. Its six digits narrow a destination in stages, from a broad region of the country down to a single delivery post office. A sorter in a distant city no longer had to know the town. He had only to read a number. There is nothing glamorous about this workaday invention, though it quietly moves mail across one of the largest postal networks in the world.
Yet the number did not finish the job. It brings the letter to the right post office, and there its work stops. From that counter to the door, India still writes “near the old water tank”, and the post still sends someone who knows where the tank used to be.
What can be inferred from the passage about a postman who has worked for many years in one area?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → His knowledge of the area is still useful, even in a system that uses PIN codes.
The last paragraph shows that the PIN code does not do the final part of the work.
- The number brings the letter to the right post office, “and there its work stops”.
- From the counter to the door, addresses still say things like “near the old water tank”. The post sends “someone who knows where the tank used to be”.
- Only a person who has known the area for a long time would know where a tank used to be. So his long memory of the place is still needed.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: He is no longer needed once every letter carries the correct PIN code. — Incorrect. Contradicted: The passage says the number “did not finish the job”. The post still sends such a person to the door.
Option 3: He sorts the letters bound for distant cities by reading their numbers. — Incorrect. Wrong link: Reading the number is the job of “a sorter in a distant city”. The local postman does the last step, from the counter to the door.
Option 4: He prefers addresses written as descriptions to addresses that carry a PIN code. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says what the postman knows, not what he likes. It gives no view of his on the two kinds of address.