Mumbai and its dabbawallahs

Mumbai and dabbawallahs share a unique relationship which cannot be described in words. For nearly 1.6 million Mumbaikars who depend on dabbawallahs for their daily lunch, they are a life source. At the same time, there are 200,000 slum children starving every day. In Mumbai’s own way to reduce this divide,  a relatively new initiative, ‘Share my Dabba’ has been started.

A Mumbai based NGO, Happy Welfare Society reached out to the dabbawallahs and the process of sharing the dabbas, currently, at South Mumbai region alone began.  If you want to share a dabba, it’s simple. Talk to your dabbawallahs and a red sticker will be given to you. Put a sticker on your dabba and once you have eaten your share of lunch, the dabbawallahs will collect your lunch, empty the dabbas and distribute it via volunteers to street children at a pre-assembled point.

While there has been criticism at this initiative, citing that this is just another way to make poor people eat leftover food but the initiative states that only hygienic food is fed to the slum children. Criticisms, complaints, cold food, leftover food- whatever it may be,  at least, an initiative has begun and street kids get a chance to eat home cooked food. Kudos to this initiative!