Dabbawala
Also called: Mumbai dabbawala, Tiffin service · Topic: Tertiary, Quaternary and Quinary Activities · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 6 "Tertiary and Quaternary Activities"
Meaning
The dabbawalas run Mumbai's lunch-box delivery service. They collect home-cooked meals from homes and carry them to offices across the city. The service began in 1890. About 5,000 workers do the job. NCERT says they serve about 1,75,000 customers. They travel by suburban train and use a code of colours and numbers on each box to show where it must go. Their deliveries are almost free of mistakes, even though many of the workers have had little formal schooling. It is a personal service in the unorganised sector, which means work that is not done by registered companies with formal contracts.
Example
Every working day in Mumbai, a dabbawala picks up a tiffin from a home in a suburb such as Borivali. It travels by local train to an office in south Mumbai, reaches the right desk by lunchtime, and the empty box goes back home in the afternoon.