Mumbai's famous tiffin carriers — popularly known as ‘dabbawallahs' — are learning English and basic computing to improve their business prospects.
Dabbawallahs collect lunch boxes from the suburban homes of nearly 2,00,000 customers and deliver them to offices and factories at lunchtime. Mumbai has about 5,000 tiffin carriers who deliver about 1,75,000 lunch boxes daily in a century-old tradition.
A unique tracking system ensures that all lunch boxes reach their rightful owners in time, recently earning a rating of 99.99 per cent for precision and accuracy from Forbes magazine.
The course, designed by Yashwantrao Chavan Open University in Maharashtra, comprises Sunday classes and easy reading material for nearly 5,000 dabbawallahs.
Raghunath Medge, president of the dabbawallahs' association — and one of the few course graduates — says most dabbawallahs have only a few years of education.
Says Gangaram Talekar, one of the seniormost dabbawallahs: “Many customers send their addresses on text messages. If we cannot read and understand their message, we have to go around asking people. Learning English and computers will save us time.” At a small but compact class in a northern suburb of Mumbai, about 20 of the 5,000 dabbawallahs have gathered for the first class. The room has several placards of basic greetings in English, all spelt phonetically alongside Marathi translations. “Good morning! Namaskar!” starts Pawan Agrawal, who has done his doctorate on the tiffin supply system and is conducting the classes.
The mostly middle-aged students echo him enthusiastically as they glance through their reading material. The class continues for about an hour with students repeating and learning greetings in English. They have busy schedules through the week.
— © BBC News/Distributed by the New York Times Syndicate
