Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the famous dabbawallas of Bombay (read “Mumbai”, if u insist!) make it to Harvard. In a way. (“Sort of,” as one with American leanings might drawl! That reminds me that quite a lot of our metropolitan youngsters are more American than the Americans themselves! 🙂
Dabbawalas
The case of the famous – “justly famous”, we would like to add – dabbawallahs is now a part of Harvard’s curriculum.
Manish Tripathy, one of the dabbawallahs, said: “They (HBS) prepared a comprehensive report and submitted it to us for review. The final draft is now ready. We will give the confirmation next week and the case study will be released in March in a big way.”
He further said: “Unlike many other B-schools which studied us, Harvard’s was in-depth. They have got the real gist of how two lakh tiffin boxes are delivered every day by 5,000 dabbawallahs without any mix-up.”
A professor from Harvard Business School and two professors from the B-school’s research center in Worli, Mumbai, conducted the hands-on case study and prepared the report.
Recognition of the good work being done by our dabbawallas of Bombay has been long overdue. Whoever said that we are not good organisers in the face of complexity?
The irony is that more non-Indians seem to know more about the dabbawallas than we do.
