Mumbai Dabbawalah

- Dabbawala From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mumbai Dabbahwalas Adabbawala(Marathi ) also spelled asdabbawallaordabbawallah literally meaning (box soulfulness), is a person inIndia, most commonly found in the city ofMumbai, who is employed in a unique helper industry whose primary business is collect freshly cooked food in eat boxesfrom the residences of theoffice workers(mostly in the suburbs), delivering it to their respective workplaces and returning the empty boxes back to the customers residence by using various modes of transport. lunch is an old-fashioned side word for a light lunch or afternoon snack, and whatevertimes, by extension, for the box it is autoried in. For this reason, thedabbawalas be sometimes calledTiffin Wallahs. Contentshide * 1Etymology and historic roots * 1. 1The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust * 2Supply chain * 2. 1Appearance and coding * 2. 2Uninterrupted run * 3Economic abridgment * 3. 1Awards and recognition * 4In Media * 5Referen ces * 6Further reading * 7External links - editEtymology and historical roots Adabba, or Indian-style tiffin box. The word Dabbawala inMarathiwhen literally translated, means one who carries a box. Dabba means a box (usually a cylindrical tin or aluminium container), while wala is a suffix, denoting a doer or holder of the preceding word. 1The closest meaning of theDabbawalain English would be the lunch box obstetrical delivery man. Though this profession seems to be simple, it is actually a highly specialized armed service in Mumbai which is everywhere a century old and has become integral to the cultural life of this city.The concept of thedabbawalaoriginated when India was underBritish rule. Many British people who came to thecolonydid not like the topical anaesthetic food, so a service was set up to bring lunch to these people in their workplace straight from their home. Nowadays, although Indian businesspersons ar the maincustomersfor the dabbawalas, increasingly affluent families employ them instead for lunch delivery to their school-aged children. Even though the services provided might include cooking, it primarily consists of only delivery either home-made or in that latter case, food ordered from a restaurant. editThe Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust This service originated in 1880. In 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche and Ananth Mandra Reddy started a lunch delivery service with ab stunned 100 men. 2In 1930, he informally attempted to unionize thedabbawallas. Later a charitable trust was registered in 1956 under the ready ofNutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust. The commercial arm of this trust was registered in 1968 asMumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association. The present President of the association is Raghunath Medge. Nowadays, the service oft includes cooking of food in addition to the delivery. editSupply chain A collecting Dabbawala on a bicycle Mumbai is a very densely populatedcity of millionswith vast flows oftraffic. Because of this, lengthy commutes to workplaces are common, with many workers traveling by train. Instead of going home forlunchor paying for a meal and eating out every day in acafe, many office workers have a cooked meal sent either from their home, or sometimes from a caterer who fundamentally cooks and delivers the meal in lunch boxes and then have the empty lunch boxes collected and re-sent the same day.This is usually done for a monthly fee of active 450 Indian rupees. The meal iscookedin the morning and sent in lunch boxes carried by dabbawalas, who have a complex association and hierarchy across the city. Dabbawalas in act at aMumbai Suburban Railwaystation. Acollecting dabbawala, usually onbicycle, collects dabbas either from a workers home or from the dabba forgers. As many of the carriers are illiterate, the dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols.The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he and other col lecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into groups. The grouped boxes are put in the coaches oftrains, with markings to identify the destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings include therailway stationto unload the boxes and the building address where the box has to be delivered. At each station, boxes are handed over to alocal dabbawala, who delivers them. The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses. editAppearance and coding Markings (1) abbreviations for collection points, (2) colour label for starting station, (3) number for destination station and (4) markings for handling dabbawala at destination, building and floor. 3 A typicaldabbawalalunch. It was estimated in 2007 that the dabbawala industry was still growing by 5-10%per annum. 4 Although the service remains essentially low-tech, with the delivery men as the prime movers, the dabbawalas have started to embrace technology, and now allow tanuj wadhi for delivery throughSMS. 5An on-line poll on the web site ensures that customer feedback is achieven pride of place. The success of the corpse depends on teamwork and time counselling. Such is the dedication and commitment of the barely literate and unshoed delivery men (there are only a few delivery women) who form links in the extensive delivery chain, that there is no system of documentation at all. A simple colour-coding system doubles as an ID system for the destination and recipient. There are no multiple elaborate layers of management either just three layers.Each dabbawala is also required to contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cottonkurta-pyjamas, and the white trademarkGandhi cap(topi). The return on capital is ensured by monthly division of the earnings of each unit. editUninterrupted services The service is almost always uninterrupted, even on the days of severe weather such asmonsoons. The local dabbawalas and population know each other well, and often form bonds of trust.Dabbawalas are generally well accustomed to the local areas they cater to, and use shortcuts and other low profile routes to deliver their goods on time. Occasionally, people give notice (of) between home and work by putting messages inside the boxes however, with the rise of instant communication such as SMS and instant messaging, this trend is vanishing. Since 1890 ,the year in which the Dabbawalas formally came into existence ,none of its members had ever gone on a strike.This trend was broken in 2011 when the members decided to head towards Azad Maidan to support Anna Hazare in his campaign against corruption. 6 - editEconomic analysis Eachdabbawala, regardless of role, take aways paid about eight thousand rupees per month. In 1998,Forbes Magazinefound its reliability to be that of asix sigmastandard. bettersourceneededThis implies that the Dabbawalas mak e less than one mistake in every 6 million deliveries, despite most of the delivery staff being illiterate. 7More than 175,000 to 200,000 lunch boxes get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality. TheBBChas produced adocumentaryondabbawalascitation neededandPrince Charles, during his visit to India, visited them (he had to correspond in with their schedule, since their timing was too precise to permit any flexibility). Prince Charles also invited them to his wedding withCamilla Parker Bowlesin London on 9 April 2005.Owing to the tremendous publicity, some of the dabbawalas were invited to give guest lectures in some of the topbusiness schoolsof India, which is very unusual. Most remarkably in the eyes of many Westerners, the success of the dabbawala trade has involved no advanced technology,8except for trains (and as mentioned above, SMS services for booking). The New York Timesreported in 2007 that the 125-year-olddabbawalaindustry continues to grow at a rate of 510% per year. 4 editAwards and recognition ISO 90012000 certified by theJoint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand9 - editIn Media On 28 December 2011, the British series, Top Gear broadcasted the episode India Special where Clarkson, Hammond, and whitethorn travel to India for a trade mission. In Mumbai, they aimed to beat the efficiency of the dabbawala by using a car instead of a train. The mission fails when Clarkson, in a rush to beat the train, did not take enough cargo, leaving Hammond to carry Clarksons load as well as his own.Hammond accidentally loses and subsequently ruins some of his cargo, and May, trying to take a ring road approach to the station, takes a wrong turn and ends up in the countryside. 10 - editReferences 1. Pathak R. C. (1946, Reprint 2000). The Standard Dictionary of the Hindi Language, Varanasi Bhargava Book Depot,pp. 300,680 2. Bombay Dabbawalas go high-tech. Physorg. com. Retrieved 2011-09-15. 3. Mumbais amazing Dabbawalas. Rediff. com(November 11, 2005). 4. abIn India, Grandma Cooks, They DeliverfromThe New York Times 5. BBC News Indias tiffinwalas fuel miserliness 6. http//www. thehindubusinessline. com/industry-and-economy/economy/dabbawalas-to-strike-for-the-first-time-in-120-years/article2369850. ece 7. The Guardian. A Bombay lunchbox(June 24, 2002). 8. Amberish K Diwanji, Dabbawallahs Mumbais best managed business, Rediff. com, November 4, 2003 9. Mydabbawala. com Accolades To Dabbawala 10. http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Top_Gear_India_Special