The `Girnar Chaiwala' scheme was started on January 9. The street children, wearing Girnar uniforms, bear tea-vending machines on green bicycles. They move around Nariman Point, Chowpatty, CST and Churchgate railway stations, Haji Ali, Mahalaxmi and Worli, dispensing hygienically prepared Girnar Royal Cup tea at Rs 4 per cup. Among the varieties available are the regular milk tea, black tea, masala tea, lemon tea and instant coffee with or without sugar.

Girnar has trained the boys for the job, having taught them the skills of presentation, sales and marketing apart from imparting the recipe for perfect tea. The vendors will be supplied raw materialrequired to run the mobile tea centre, like tea bags, sugar, tea masala, disposable cups and plastic spoons, at cost price from the Girnar retail outlets in the city. If the vendor desires he can increase his income by stocking biscuits and snacks.

Mahendra Mehta of Project Mainstream says this is yet another attempt by his organisation to rope in the corporate sector to help street children of Mumbai to have an opportunity to generate income. He describes his organisation as a business management school for street children.

If this scheme is successful, the Girnar Chaiwala project will be expanded to provide employment to about 100 unemployed youths. Mehta says if each Rotary Club were to adopt two to four vendors, then 1,000 street children would have jobs at the end of three years. He adds that Mumbai has the highest number of street children in the world, numbering around one million.

Project Mainstream made a smart move by inviting Mumbai's municipal commissioner K Nalinakshan to inaugurate the teavending project. Of course, hawkers that move about in the city do not require a licence to operate, but Nalinakshan's attendance does place the street children on a safer wicket with the municipal authorities. Mehta would have liked the police commissioner to be there too. He does not voice his fear of `hafta' collection and police harassment, though. However, this was not possible at short notice.

Nalinakshan also took the opportunity to announce a plan by the municipal corporation to make the city "child-friendly" from February onwards. He requested corporate houses and NGOs to provide vocational training to street boys, and shelter to the girls.

But harassment from the higher-ups apart, the one immediate problem the scheme could face is lack of public patronage. The tea being sold by the Girnar vendors is priced at Rs 4 while other roadside stalls sell it for half the price. But the promoters are banking on the variety and hygiene factors, and the willingness of the average Mumbaiite to help thecity's underprivileged, to see it through.