Mumbai Dabbawallas

MUMBAI DABBAWALLAS

They constitute a lunch box delivery & return system, that deliver lunches from homes and restaurants to people at work in the city of Mumbai. The lunch boxes are picked up in the late morning, delivered predominantly using bicycles and local train network, and empty lunch box is then return to home in the evening.

This system was started by Mahadeo Havaji Bachche with about 100 persons in 1890. In 1930 he informally attempted to unionise the dabbawallas. Later a charitable trust was registered in 1956 under the name of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust.

Lunch boxes are marked in several ways

• Abbreviations for collecting points.
• Colour Code for starting station.
• Number for destination station.
• Markings for handling dabbawalla at destination, building and floor.

Each dabbawala is required to contribute a minimum capital in kind, in form of two bicycle, a wooden crate for tiffins, white cotton shirt and Pajama, and white Gandhi cap .Each month there is division of earnings of each unit. Fines are imposed for alcohol & tobacco consumption, being out of uniform and absenteeism.

A collecting dabbawalla, usually on bicycle collects dabbas from homes/restaurants. This dabbawalla then takes them to sorting place, where he and other collecting dabbawallas sort the dabbas( Lunch Boxes) into the groups. The grouped boxes are put in local train coaches, with marking to identify the desitination station of the dabba (usually there is a designated car for these dabbas. The markings include  the destination building delivery address.. At each stations, lunch boxes are handed over to a local dabbawalla, who delivers them. The empty lunch boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective homes/restaurants from where they have been picked.

Dabbawallas hardly ever make mistake, it has been estimated that the mistake rate is one in 8 million deliveries. Dabbawallas have been appreciated for their services by famous foreign personalities including Prince Charles of UK. Many Indian and overseas business schools teach their case study as part of their management studies curriculam.

Currently monthly charges for delivering the dabba ranges from Rs 600 to Rs 1000, depending upon the distance and the time taken.

Recently a controversy erupted , when some elite schools in Mumbai stopped these dabbawallas from delivering the dabbas to students during lunch hours. For the past few months, the various dabbawallas associations in Mumbai have been expressing their grievances after number of schools barred them from delivering dabbas to the students. Their stand is we provide home foods to more than 2 lakhs people daily. The school management is indirectly forcing students to buy food from school canteen. The contention of school management is- even if a provision is put in place to allow dabbawallas in school premises, it may collapse after few months. Monitoring their movements will add more burden on the schools, whose role is to focus on academics, will have to take burden of managing dabbawallas.

Now  with govt directing Police and other govt authorities to facilitate dabbawallas services to school students, and school management, however, are unlikely to permit the dabbawallas on school premises, citing security reasons. In this face off, the sufferers will be the students, who will be deprived off home food.

In my opinion, these school authorities are unnecessary creating this issue of security. The dabbawallas are providing services to all kind of establishments including high security govt. offices and there have been no negative reports  on these dabbawallas, and no one has ever mention that they are security threats. It looks like by refusing their entry into school premises the school management is trying to force the students to eat from school canteen, which is under school management, and this move will enable the school to make more money.

What you say my friends.

Waiting for your views/feed backs/ comments.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

23^rd May 2019.