Mumbai's dabbawalas have delivered lunch by bicycle and train since 1890 with a colour code and almost no errors

money & economicsWikipedia1890 · Mumbai, India

Mumbai's dabbawalas have delivered lunch by bicycle and train since 1890 with a colour code and almost no errors

the gist

Dabbawalas are lunchbox couriers who collect hot home-cooked meals from homes in the late morning, deliver them to offices across Mumbai, and return the empty tins in the afternoon. The service began in 1890, when Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a delivery service for migrants who could not get meals that suited their diets. Each tin carries a code of letters, colours and numbers that marks its pickup point, the railway station, and the building and floor of the recipient. Hundreds of thousands of boxes are moved each day, mostly by bicycle and in train carriages reserved for them. Most dabbawalas come from the same region and are related, and the network runs on trust and strict rules.

how it works

Each box is marked with a colour-coded and alphanumeric code that tells the carrier where it started, which train station it goes through and where it should be delivered. Carriers sort the boxes at each stage, so a box passes through several hands in a fixed order before reaching its owner, and the empties return the same way.

so what

The system is a classic case of a low-tech logistics network that works very well, and it is studied in business schools, including Harvard. A widely repeated claim of near-perfect accuracy comes from a journalist's rough estimate rather than a rigorous study.

the bigger pattern

Low-cost systems that outperform high-tech ones through simple rules and strong networks are studied in logistics, from Japan's kanban production to the Harvard case studies on the dabbawalas.

fun fact

Dabbawalas were invited to the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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