India has the third highest number of COVID infections i the world at 1.29 million, US being the leader (4.1 m) and Brazil (2.12 m). One of the communities seriously affected by the virus is the dabbawallas in Mumbai.
I wonder how many know the meaning of the word ‘tiffin’? It was coined by the British (while they were in India) to mean mid-day meal. This is for many millions of Indians, especially children at school, a very important meal. Before the invasion of fast food chains, the hungry Indians either carried a packaged tiffin with them or got someone to deliver the meals during the lunch hour.
In Mumbai, the people who deliver the meals are called dabbawalas: ‘dabba’ meaning a two or three-tiered steel or aluminum container, and ‘wala’ meaning one who carries or deals with it.
They pick up the dabbas from homes and deliver them to the clients in schools and offices.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Not when you consider that every day, in Mumbai, over 5,000 dabbawalas collect and deliver around 250,000 lunches from as far away as sixty kilometers, and that sometimes each person carries 40 heavy dabbas at a time!
This is an ingenious distribution system considering the distance they have to travel and the number of clients to be served. The self-employed entrepreneurs work in groups of four in a sort of multiple relay, ensuring door to door delivery. For the 250,000 dabbas have to go to the right person, they have to start from the point of origin, go through the transshipment in the suburban trains of Mumbai, in all seasons including the monsoon, and arrive on time at the right place with the right tiffin container!
A few years ago Forbes magazine awarded the system a six-sigma performance rating, which ranks the dabbawalas alongside the likes of GE and Motorola in terms of efficiency and quality of service. It is all the more astonishing because the carriers are semi-literate or illiterate and in a city in which many observe religious dietary rules, an errant delivery could easily cause offense. You don’t want to deliver pork curry and rice to a Muslim or beef curry to a Hindu!
To obviate this problem, each tiffin carrier is color coded and marked with simple acronyms such as HO for hospital, if that is the final destination. HOS would mean Hospital, Sukumar.
Usually one dabbawala carries 20 dabbas. They are packed in a wooden crate about ten feet long and two feet wide and divided into 20 compartments, ten in each row, and one compartment for one dabba. From the railway station where the relay ends, the dabbawala runs to his destination.
The dabbas are delivered in meticulous sequence, collected and returned to the homes of origin.
If the dabbawallas disappear it will not be because they are inefficient. Although they have to contend with one of the most chaotic cities in the world, an independent audit has found out that a dabbawala will only make one mistake per six million deliveries. No, the blame would go to the western fast food outlets like MacDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza Burger King and others. Also, the rapid expansion of the middle class also means that people are less inclined to stay home and cook.
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The lotos eaters of the land of the free and home of the brave
I know, I know. You think I have made a spelling error. No pilgrims, I have not. I am not talking about the lotus, the rhizome which produces the most sensuous flower in the world. No. I am referring to the poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
In the summer of 1829 Tennyson and friend Arthur Hallem made a trek into conflict-torn northern Spain. When they visited the Pyrenees mountains, they found a group of mariners who, upon eating the fruits of the lotos tree were put in an altered state. Tennyson borrowed the theme from Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus tells his mariners to have courage, assuring them that they will soon reach the shore of their home. In the afternoon, they reach a land ‘in which it seemed always afternoon’ because of the languid and peaceful atmosphere.
Now, there is no available research on the lotos. If Tennyson is to be believed, it is a tree that bears fruits, like cherries. I suspect that you eat it when it is ripe. I also assume that one could make a fruit salad, or eat it stewed. I am going by the first stanza of the poem:
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
’To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave…….
However, there is overpowering evidence now that Columbus did pack a few saplings on his voyage. He gave two plants to the Indians. Later George Washington bought the trees for a mere two acres of land each and gave one sapling to the Democrats and the other to the Republicans. The Democrats who never knew when a good thing even if it hit it hit them on their face, never took care of the tree. But the others nourished it and as a result there are many private orchards, laden with fruits. But it seems that they let the fruits go to waste until three and a half or so years ago. On the advice of patriots like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, on January 1964 the Republicans started consuming the fruit, thus putting the entire party in an altered state.
The fruit of lotos affects different people differently—like liquor does. Thus, the effect on the Governors (especially those who are up for reelection) is different from that on the members of congress. Most of them wake up at four in the morning because that is when the edict comes from the modern-day Mt Olympus. What happens is exemplified by the altered behavior of one of the alterees—Brian Kemp, the Governor of Georgia. TM (Tangerine Messiah, not transcendental meditation) did not support the use of masks. So Kemp banned cities and counties from ordering residents to wear masks. But many local governments, including Atlanta, went ahead and mandated masks. This prompted Kemp to file a 124-page lawsuit against the Mayor of Atlanta. The judge recused herself and asked the litigants to seek arbitration. So Kemp found himself in a pickle. But on Tuesday the 21st,the Messiah said that it is necessary to wear the mask. He even said that it is a patriotic duty. And made a token appearance wearing a mask. (By the way the Messiah was born in a permanently altered state.) Kemp promptly changed his stance.
Space limitations prevent me from giving more examples. However, the action of one congressman merits attention. It appears that this man has a flair for theatrics and as such at a public meeting he appeared wearing a mask and shouted into the mike, “I cant breathe!” and pulled the mask off his face in dramatic fashion.
Subtext 
Sukumar….last November when we were in Mumbai we saw these fellows in action….it is amazing. but as you point out there are fewer of them as cheap fast food becomes more available to the downtown workers…they are lossing to Burger King, Mcds and the like…
The life and services of dabbawalahs are an integral part of the socio cultural milieu of Mumbai. The symbiotic relationship between dabbawalahs and city dwellers trademark Mumbai singularly;perhaps it’s an idiosyncrasy that exclusively belongs to the one and only Mumbai.
True that Covid has wrecked their living now, but that’s only a temporary phenomenon. Neither the current breakdown nor any substitute arrangement is going to eliminate them from Mumbai. Their organized workforce demonstrates remarkable entrepreneurial skills which Management Pundits should take cognizance of. Many schools of business by now have done a lot of managerial research which throws light on time management, customer satisfaction, service orchestration, impeccable delivery system, reliability and so on and so forth.
Very good blog!
Aniyan
Dabbawalas, a speciality of Mumbai !! A unique culture of Bombay, the earlier name of Mumbai.The Blog Well written !!
Rajan ( Sreevaraham)
Hi Sukumar:
I had read an article some time ago about the remarkable deliveries.
I certainly hope that the fast food companies from the U.S. don’t destroy their living.
Eventually they would. It is only a question of time, what with more and more women joining the workforce.