Dabbawala

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A dabbawala at work
Dabbawala

A Dabbawala ( Hindi , also Dabbawalla or Dabbawallah ) is a delivery person who brings lunch ( Indian-English tiffin ) for office workers from their home or a large kitchen to the workplace in Mumbai and other major Indian cities . The delivery service transports the food in dabbas , multi-part metal containers that are called tiffin tins in English , often shortened to tiffin , and correspond to the German Henkelmann . The second syllable -wala generally stands for a person who has a professional activity.

logistics

The Dabbawalas' transport system is remarkable because it is based on the unique logistics of a number of deliverers. The Dabbawalas are organized in collectives. The food boxes are coded with colors, letters and numbers so that there is an extremely high level of delivery accuracy despite multiple handovers on the way from the sender to the recipient. Every day around 200,000 meals are delivered and the empty containers are brought back, with an upward trend (growth rates of 5–10% per year). With this peculiar, fragmented and thus successful logistics, the Dabbawala also aroused the interest of economists.

Being dabbawala is a respected, relatively well-paid profession. There are around 5000 Dabbawala in Mumbai. They are represented by the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust (NMTBSCT).

literature

Movie

  • The perfect chaos: Out and about with the Dabbawalas in Mumbai. Documentary, Germany, 2008, 43 min., Script and director: Antje Christ, production: Christ Media, ZDF , arte , first broadcast: September 30, 2008 on arte
  • Lunch box . Feature film, India, Germany, France, 2013, 105 min., Written and directed by Ritesh Batra
  • Catering, the art of catering on the fly - Documentation by NZZ Format (2005), published on YouTube on February 6, 2015

See also

Web links

Commons : Dabbawalas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf Alexander Hanisch: Karma from the tin bowl . In: The time . No. 39 , 2006.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Waldherr: The way of many hands . ( Memento from September 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Brand eins Magazin , No. 7, 2005
  3. ^ Table of contents ( memento of February 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) by arte