On a day, the country reeled under a strike, a management expert has aknowledged the contributions by Mumbai's Dabbawalas.
The city's lunch carriers stand as a unique group of service providers who as a unit have set a benchmark for reliability and efficiency in the last 120 years, management expert Dr. Pawan Giridharilal Agrawal observed.
"In their existence of 120 years, the Dabbawalas have never struck work, have never been involved in a police or court case, and have not let setbacks such as floods and terror attacks make a dent in their punctuality record," Agrawal said.
"Such is the selflessness, the work ethic and commitment of this community of semi-literate service providers, for whom the appreciation of one happy customer is of far greater value than the string of national and international honours that have come their way," he said delivering a lecture on Dabbawalas at the Asian School of Business in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
From a single Dabbawala and one customer in 1890, the network had grown to a 5,000-strong team of workers who deliver fresh home cooked food to nearly 2,00,000 people employed across Mumbai – on time, every day.
On their success, Agrawal noted: "Great accent is laid on identifying and grooming the Dabbawala, team work is assiduously nurtured and the word of 'Mukadam' (group leader) is respected. There is no employer-employee relationship and you will find the President of the organisation on a railway platform on a workday morning with his share of Dabbas."
Despite zero technological backup, such is the efficiency of their coding and delivery system that their error rate had been measured at one in 16 million transactions – a figure that continues to astonish management gurus, he said.
Agrawal, who has published a doctoral thesis on the logistics and supply chain management of the Dabbawalas and given innumerable talks about them, said the community's success was largely due to their unwavering commitment to a set of principles, the foremost among which are: 'Work is Worship' and 'Customer is God'.
"These men earn an average Rs 6,000-7,000 monthly and many have to supplement their income with other work. But job satisfaction matters; the Dabbawala network has people who have been in the business for 40-50 years. How many companies today can boast such an employee record?," he added.
Meanwhile, the nation-wide 24-hour strike called by 11 major trade unions on Tuesday evoked a mixed response disrupting public sector banking operations and transport services in some states but normal life remained largely unaffected.
The strike in protest against the government's 'anti-labour policies' was by and large peaceful with no major incidents of violence being reported.
Air services remained normal while train services were disrupted in some divisions of Eastern Railways and South Eastern Railways due to picketing by protesters.
Life in major cities, including capital Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, was normal though it was affected in states like Kerala, Odisha and Tripura.