President’s Message
Fellow Rotarians,
Very Warm Greetings!!!
Last Tuesday, it was a delight to meet and listen to the flying journey of Aarohi Pandit, the well-deserved recipient of the Uma Jain Award for Young Women Achievers. Aarohi has made all Indians proud and on behalf of our Club, I wish her all the best in achieving greater heights, flying even higher and finding her own glory.
In today’s fast paced world, there are still the traditional class of Mumbaikars whose afternoon meals depend on Dabbawallas who deliver hundreds of thousands of meals each working day throughout the city – this is Mumbai’s very own food delivery system and has been so for the past 130 years.
I am not sure how many of us know that in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche, started a lunch box/tiffin service with a group of about a hundred men, to deliver lunch from people’s homes straight to their work place. It was adopted as a professional business in the 19th century when Mumbai’s rapidly growing population, especially the middle class, emerged, who preferred home-cooked meals.
After collecting lunch-boxes (“dabbas”) from their customers, Dabbawalas, over the next few hours, crisscross the busy city multiple times, delivering home cooked meals to hundreds of thousands of office-goers in time for lunch and return back the empty boxes to that customer’s residence again. The complex series of exchanges of these lunch boxes relies on an esoteric alphanumeric code scrawled on each lunch-box – designed to be easily understood only by Dabbawalas. Their entire ecosystem depends on teamwork, co-operation and meticulous timing.
Despite tight schedules, Dabbawalas appear surprisingly relaxed most of the time, joking and chatting as they sort out their dabbas. But when the next stage of the process nears, there is sudden heightened activity with Dabbawalas racing around corners on bicycles, and rushing into office buildings.
Dabbawalas are iconic and an inherent part of Mumbai for the job they do, with such precision and timeliness, they command such respect that no work force has ever received. No wonder Dabbawalas are waved through by the public and police alike.
These men who have invested in two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta-pyjamas, and white trademark Gandhi topi, are part of a co-operative as equal partners, with elected Mukadams, and following strict rules with utmost professionalism.
The Dabbawalas belong mostly to the Vakari community, which worships the Hindu God Vithala, who regards giving food as one of the greatest donations.
The Dabbawalas’ service even has its own website which says that (i) Forbes Global has in 1998 rated them Six Sigma efficiency; (ii) It is ISO 9001:2000 registered; (iii) IIM Ahmedabad in 2005 featured them in case study on management perspectives of logistics. One cannot forget their association with the House of Windsor and Prince Charles, as also, with Sir Richard Branson of Virgin group.
In the last few years, online food-delivery companies have brought specially-prepared food to your desks, and this seems like the height of app-based luxury. But Mumbai’s Dabbawalas have been doing this for about 130 years and that too, home cooked food. The new digital rivals are certainly no competition. There’s only one Mumbai Dabbawala!!!
Preeti Mehta
President