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Dabawalas
Many documentaries have been made about them, including one by the BBC. Even Richard Branson came to these dabawalas to know about their time management skills, logistics and six sigma performances and have wondered at the efficiency of these semi-literate men. Belonging to a particular region of Maharashtra, they are still steeped in the values taught by Sant Tukaram and Dnyaneshwar. In the world of computers and MBAs, these men have not only managed to maintain their enviable record of efficiency but have probably remained a step ahead of the change that overcomes Mumbai each passing day. From Bombay to Mumbai and from the slow-moving trams to the fast-track electric trains, the metropolitan has changed beyond recognition. The dabawalas have had to learn to move faster to match the increasing pace of the city since what has remained constant is the fact that office-goers who have to leave their homes too early to carry their own tiffins continue to yearn for home-cooked meals. Not only because they are more economical but because of the very Indian belief that the affection and feeling with which a meal is cooked adds value to it. With this principle being central to the business of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust, 5,000 men run it as equal partners though each one of them earns only Rs 5,000-6,000 per month. What, however, is remarkable is that they are satisfied in what they earn and do not attempt to force their customers to pay more. How and why they are content in a city like Mumbai is a subject that many people would want to know. Shrinivas Pandit, along with Anita Dalal, a Mumbai-based journalist, try to search answers through illuminating dialogues with Raghunath Megde and Gangaram Talekar, two of the dabawalas. We come to know of the values that have sustained this business and marvel at the pride that they feel in the history of their native villages in the region of Pune and Lonavala, their simplicity and dedication, which allows for no more than one error in 16 million transactions! At the end of it, all some reader should not be blamed if they feel that the picture about the business and the men who run it would have been complete if through dialogues the family life of these men had been revealed. Do their families live with them? Are their children content with the little subsistence that they earn? How do they manage to remain unaffected by the rat race that is Mumbai, and if ever they nurse the ambition of making their children earn enough to enjoy the consumerist pleasures that modern life offers? But for these questions and answers the book is illuminating and instructive and reinstates faith in the essential goodness of humanity.
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BUSINESS
houses have long desired to identify the durables and the values on
which a lasting business can be founded. Shrinivas Pandit, a veteran HR
professional, too attempts to find out those values by studying Mumbai's
115-year-old business enterprise. Mumbai's dabawalas have been
the object of various studies and even those, like the Prince of Wales,
who are ever looking for innovative and indigenous solutions to the
problems of mankind, has been so impressed by their success that he made
it a point to meet them. How he met them in the office of the Western
Railways and how he invited two of the dabawalas for his marriage
is all too well recorded.