Professional Documents
Culture Documents
known to the customers personally, so that there is no question of lack of trust. Also, they are well
accustomed to the local areas they cater to, which allows them to access any destination with ease.
Occasionally, people communicate between home and work by putting messages inside the boxes.
However, this was usually before the accessibility of instant telecommunications.
A dabbawala lifts wooden crate containing dabbas weighting from 80kg to 100kg.
Honest: They have shown their honesty for over 125 years.
Reliable: They deliver lunch Dabbas by 12:30PM every day they are always on time .They
understand the true value of time.
Low salary: A Dabbawala may work for a salary starting from Rs.5000/- onwards. so it costs
effective to employ a Dabbawala.
Full knowledge of Mumbai: They know the in &out of Mumbai.
10. Dabbawallas are from the remote villages of Maharashtra and mostly uneducated. They
regularly organize bhajan and kirtans and spread the essence of Marathi culture, good will
and one ness of India. Being a part of dabbawalas you are actually nurturing Marathi culture.
mobiles dabba is marked with black swastika a red dot a yellow stroke. Each symbol marks a
different stage of the dabbas odyssey from mohiles flat to his office and back. The
dabbawalas reads the hieroglyphics like a sentence. But as one man on the beat said we often
recognize a dabba by its feel like we would a familiar slipper. Mohiles dabbawalas knocks
precisely at 10 and he isnt wearing a watch. He grabs the dabba from mrs. Mohile and
sprints down the three flights. His daily beat covers 35 boxes spread over 20 square
kilometers. Each box has different marking as each is bound for different destinations. At
exactly 10.20 he has a rendezvous with dabbawalas no.2 who takes over all the swastikamarked boxes he has collected from other couriers, pedals off to the suburban rail head of
dadar. Dabbawalas no.1 continues picking up dabbas meant for other pick-up men. At dadar
hundreds of dabbas have been deposited by different collectors. From them dabbawalla no.3
swiftly and unerringly picks out all the ones with a red dot mohiles included. He loads his
consignment on a tray an unwieldy wooden crate 2.5 meters long and less than a meter
wide just the right size for 39 dabbas to fit snugly in rows of three. He heaven the tray on his
head and runs to the platform just as the train clacks in. Within the two-minute halt he must
elbow his way in through the narrow compartment doorway with his heavy head load along
with some 25 office bound commuters and half-dozen other dabbawallas all in as great a
hurry as himself. Bombay alone can sustain a dabbawalla network of this size and complexity
because it alone among Indian cities has a quick efficient and far-flung suburban railway
service. Mohiles dabba is now one of thousand riding the train from all over the suburbs but
the yellow stroke on its lid tells its destination: Victoria terminus. Different marks on other
dabbas tell the career at which stations an route he must pass them on to other waiting links in
the cross network. At victoria terminus the hub of commercial Mumbai mohiles dabba enters
the last phase of its journey. Dabbawalla no.4 waiting on the platform picks it out together
with other boxes marked with his symbol the white cross. The black circle on mohiles case
indicates its exact destination: the BMC building. By 12:30 he has carried his create four
flights of stairs and left mohiles lunch-box along with some 20 others in a corner of the
canteen. mohile coming in at 1 p.m. will recognize his dabba from his name on an attached
tag. Mohile pays only RS.35 a month for this service. Rates vary the difference depending not
on the distance from the house to the offices but on the distance the dabbawalla has to walk to
and from the nearest suburban station. However rarely is the fee more than Rs.50.
2. EXAMPLE
With the sheer size of the operation and the nerve-racking rush surely the dabbas get mixed
up. In a country with rigid food taboos this could be disastrous. Krishna a staunch vegetarian
south Indian Brahmin recalls how he opened his dabba one day hoping to see fluffy snow
white rice and instead found half a fried fish staring back at him. I couldnt look at food for
a week without that wretched fish head swimming up before for eyes: he remembers with a
shudder. But such instances are rare. Not so infrequent is the loss of dabbas about 10to15
every day. Some have merely gone astray and are soon traced. But some are stolen. In this
case the owner is paid back half the price of a new lunch pail. In a dabbawllas tray a
Brahmins rice jostles along with a low-caste chapatti, a Hindus vegetable curry with a
Muslims mutton korma thus in a way the dabbed system dissolves the barriers of
class,casteand community which havent been entirely demolished from Indian society.
3. Example
The man who carries dabba is not his own master. He is the servant employed by one of
the citys 635 macadams or contractors, ex- dabbawallas themselves or even still plying the
beat. It is they who orchestrate the whole system. They in turn are answerable to their guild
the Bombay Tiffin box Suppliers Association. Apart from the daily hardship the dabbawalla is
exposed to constant hazards a slip from the doorway of a crowded, speeded train, juggernaut
buses elbowing his fragile bicycle into the gutter in a bid to prove that might is right a car not
cross the road too fast with his cumbersome head load. Some month ago a dabbawalla
waiting on his bicycle at a traffic light was hurled off the road by a lorry gone berserk and
was smashed to death. Yet even in such extreme situation his quota of dabba was delivered.
News travels fast on the network. The mukadam got to hear of the accident within minutes
and contracted the secretary of the Association(who patrols the city for just this kind of
emergency)asked him to look after the police formalities collected the dead mans dabbas and
being familiar with the symbols got them to their destination-just 30 minute late. The job
never a cushy one gets even worse during the citys notorious monsoon when rains lash the
metropolis for days without let-up ,flooding railway tracks, paralyzing the train-and thus the
dabbawallas. A contractor proudly tells of how hisboyethink nothing of getting down on the
flooded tracks and walking a few extra kilometers in the lashing rain with their head loads so
that they can keep their rendezvous with the contract men at the terminus. The dabbawallas
hardships are not confined to their jobs. In the citys impossible hosing problem most of them
are forced to leave their families behind in the village and see them twice or thrice a year.
They live in cramped slum ghettoes. They who go through so much to deliver hot meal to
hundred have time only for hurried chapatti and few morsels of vegetables wrapped in a
newspaper and brought from home. Like their clients they cannot or will not eat in restaurants
Most of Mumbais dabbawalla community comes from pune, some four train hours away
from Mumbai. Other dabbawallas have an explanation for this. At the turn century some
enterprising villagers from here went to Mumbai in search of better livelihoods. They
discovered that a hardy but illiterate man could be nothing but a coolie of sorts. They carried
any kind of load and some specialized in lunchboxes. It was only natural that the next man to
leave the village would come and stay with his relative in the city and as natural that his
kinsman would induct him into his own profession. Thus gradually the business become the
monopoly of families from this region. The association too is a binding force.it helps out with
accidents and in brushes with law one of the dabbawallas left his railway pass at home and
sure enough the ticket checker chose that day to ask for it. A general secretary patrolling that
particular beat got to hear of the incident and rushed to the station to sort out the matter so
that the dabbawalla could get on with his job explain an office beare. He adds sometimes
we take the help of the police in tracking organized gangs of dabba thieves. But you know
what the law is like. It is complicates matters. As far as possible we handle such things by
ourselves. Our men are everywhere and they soon get to know the whereabouts of the crooks.
Prince
Charles
and
Mr
Richard
Branson.
Dr Agrawal, a PhD in: 'A study of Logistics and Supply Chain Management of Dabbawalas
in Mumbai', spoke on management issues and the operational model of the Mumbai
Dabbawalas and alos touched upon making a change by service to the society
He said in the speech...
The Mumbai Dabbawala is a 118 years old organization. It is engaged in the business of
delivering home made food to the working professionals at their respective offices. The
persistent issues related to over-crowded traffic and long distances in Mumbai are a big
problem for working people.
The Dabbawalas employed in this unique industry carry the lunch boxes (Dabba) from the
working professionals home to their respective office places through various modes of
transport with utmost Sense of punctuality. This is a huge industry in this fourth most
populous city of the world and the Dabbawalas are known for their sheer sense of punctuality,
discipline and trustworthiness. Moreover, the facility of availing freshly cooked homemade
food for lunch at office place is another major factor that has taken this business to newer
heights on international level.
Dr. Pawan Agarwal (M. Com., B.Ed., LLB, ACS and Ph.D.), Mumbai Dabbawala authorized
speaker/presenter attended a seminar at MARC School of Business and made a passionate
and highly informative presentation to the students and
the Indian peoples aversion to Western style fast food outlets and their love of home-made
food.
The New York Times reported in 2007 that the 125 year old Dabbawala industry continues to
grow at a rate of 5-10% per year. Dabbawalas have become an example of hard work, time
management, supply chain management success , team work and simple management skills ,
so much so that now they are invited to deliver lectures to Indias top management colleges
like IIMs and even to foreign universities.
Dabbawalas are integral part of Mumbai and every day they may be seen rushing to ensure on
time delivery of lunch boxes, so they are a common sight on the streets of Mumbai. Out of
5000 Dabbawalas, about 85% are illiterate and the remaining 15% are educated up to 8th
grade. However by working for past 116 years will full dedication, time management, no
strike gathering experience in logistics Mumbai Dabbawalas have created a place of their
own in the world of business. Six Sigma, ISO and many other certifications awarded to this
organization by external agencies further confirm the high quality of work being done by the
Mumbai Dabbawalas. The nuances of delivering a simple lunch in the Mumbai Dabbawala
way has proved to be an innovative learning experience for final year business school
graduates aspiring for top posts in corporate set-ups with fat salary packages. For the students
of MARC it was a great learning experience. They listened with rapt attention when
Pawan Agarwal elaborated the ideals of passion, teamwork, dedication and hard work and
participated enthusiastically in the interactive session that followed. Mr. U K Sharma,
Director of MARC felt that presentations on success stories like Dabbawalas help in instilling
the right values of passion, hard work and customer orientation among the students and
hoped that it will motivate them to replicate such systems in business and industry.
Mumbais Dabbawalla by Shobha Bondre
Shobha Bondre a famous Marathi writer won many awards for her 25 years of dedication
and contribution in literature. She wrote many books and novels in Marathi and English;
some of her Marathi novels were also translated in Hindi, English and Gujarati languages.
Her awarded novel 'Saata Samudrapar' is a famous Marathi Novel which got the
'Maharashtra's
Best
Novel
Award'
in
1997.
Apart from novel writing she also writes columns, articles and short stories in many journals
like Maharashtra Times, Lokprabha, Loksatta etc. In addition, she is very popular due to
dialogue scripting in many Marathi serials like Abhalmaya, Manasi, Ardhangini and Oon
Paaus. Some of her famous Marathi novels are Uncha Uncha Zoka.
Mumbai dabawalla a story about the how illiterate mans who manage the work with six
sigma cncept.and do their work on yime is all about written by mrs. Shobha bondre in her
book.
Mumbai dabawallas
Dabbawallahs of metropolis Mumbai suddenly gained fame when foreign media put them in
the spotlight. Forbes magazine was the first one to give them a six-sigma certification that
according to the president of the association and the protagonist of this book they were not
even aware of. This was followed by various documentaries and then famous visit by Prince
Charles that made the media go crazy over Dabbawallahs. To me this book is also a part of
that media frenzy.
Written both, in first person by Raghunath Medge as a memoir and by author as a narrator
this book tries to trace the century plus old history of Mumbai Dabbawallas. How a simple
village guy in Mumbai saw this an opportunity and started delivering boxes of home cooked
meals that gradually became a small scale industry in the city sustaining many families in the
villages for these men with Gandhi caps bringing food to offices. Book begins with the
highlight of the story where the two Dabbawallas including the protagonist go to London to
attend Prince Charles wedding and are treated as special guest at the Taj hotel there. The
experience makes a good story but nothing that you do not expect. After this the story of the
early days of the Dabbawallas begin along with the story of Raghunath who was one of the
few early-educated men in the community.
At some places it becomes the personal story of Raghunath where he talks passionately about
his village, his mother and stepmother and his father and the hardships they faced to give him
education. He talks about his own marriage and his clan who was his fathers responsibility
and after him became his. He talks about his first encounter with the city kids at college, his
dream to do an LLB and then a CA. He talks about the innovations he brought in the system
that made the coding on the dabbas uniform across the city. He talks about handling issues
when the business was down and organization was losing its strength. He talks about the
media craze for them and how some dabbawallas are now lecturing more than delivering
dabbas. Other places author gives her take on Dabbawallas. I wanted more on how they
manage the system, how much do they charge, how they get paid, how they increase business
and how they remain united. Basically I wanted a deeper understanding of business and
business process.
Mumbai works in different layers. A lot of things happen there that look so insignificant as
you see them but when you actually get to know about them, you are awed by them. One
such thing is the system that Mumbai Dabbwalla follows. I had no clue about the way they
operate and how they evolved with time till I read this book.
The book opens with London Beckons, where Raghunath Medge, the man who has made it
all happen and president of Dabbawallas association flies with one of his colleagues to
London to attend Prince Charless wedding. This was certainly a huge honour for the
Dabbawallas of Mumbai and how it all happened comes in the next chapters.
The way that these Dabbawallas operate, this case study was done by some MBA students
and thats how everything came into limelight. Forbes Magazine, Guiness Book, Ripleys
Believe It Or Not, Awards from IIMs, California University, BBC, CNN, Zee News, NDTV,
Star, India Today and many other popular names in the worlds did several features on them.
And not to forget the Six Sigma award.
In this book, the story is narrated by Raghunath Medge himself and Shobha Bondre.
Raghunath has explained how it all started and how his father used to take care of everything
before he took the charge. Almost everything has been told in the book very clearly and in the
most simple language. I was absolutely hooked to the book and took it everywhere with me.
Finished the book while I was getting my vehicle serviced at a service station.
As a translator, Shalaka has done a fine job. She has managed to keep to essence of the book
and has also made sure that everything is kept simple. Not too much brain raking is required
to read and understand the book. It just flows and takes you in the honest and hardworking
world of the Mumbai Dabbawallas.
I salute their spirit !