A city tale of Dabbawalas and slumdogs

You venture into international territory nearly every day. (Watching the Discovery Channel with Spanish subtitles while eating Chinese take-out totally counts, right?)
So, another lovely monsoon-filled day in Mumbai makes you feel right at home.
Time to discover some more of this city's specifics.

First up: the Dabbawalas, the tiffin-box carriers (see the tin box I posted earlier).
A Dabbawala is a person in Mumbai whose job it is to carry and deliver freshly made food from home to office workers in in lunch boxes or tiffins. More than 175,000 to 200,000 lunches get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas. Indian people prefer home-cooked grub over fastfood take away any day.
According to a recent survey, there is only one mistake in every 6,000,000 deliveries. An exemplary system...

We were slightly late to witness 'Dabbawala rush hour' (tens to hundreds of Dabbawalas jumping on an off the cargo cart of the train). We did however manage to catch some of them who slept in late themselves (or were already on their way back).
The Dabbawalas won an award in time management, Harvard Business dedicated a case study to them, they're mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records and were featured in Ripley's Believe it or Not...

Next up and slightly more controversial: the slums.
Since slum-life is such an intrinsic part of Mumbai's every day scenery, it's something one shouldn't be ignorant about.
Still pouring rain. But then again, this helps to wash all undefined (or defined but unpronounced) dirt away so is being seen as a blessing by people.

Mumbai or Bombay: 14 million inhabitants, sometimes referred to as Slumbay. Home to the largest slum in Asia: Dharavi: 1 km² in surface, over 1 million inhabitants.
1 public toilet for approximately 1000-1400 people (and still there was no queu when we passed by. Hmm...).
In Mumbai, there is simply not enough space to house everyone. Hence, the slums provide a solution. An 8m² space, can easily provide a home to 6-7 people. Some with big dreams: The children we met want to become teachers, doctors and IT specialists.

But, truth be told, it's not all agony, struggling and misery in the slums.
The small operation we joined (an organization whose proceeds go back to NGOs present in the slums), aims to show another side of slum life.
Because the slums are also big business: about 15.000 single-room mini-'factories' operating in a variety of industries: pottery, textile, recycling waste (paper, cardboard, plastic, tin cans, metal paint drums,...), literally everything that is being dumped in India (also by neighbouring countries) finds a second life through the slum activity.
Average earnings per month: Rp 2-4000 (USD 50-100).
Turnover coming out of the slums: estimated to 656 million US dollars per annum.

No pictures allowed but I'm sure you can imagine what the addition of 1km², 15.000 mini factories and 1 mio people equates to...