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Across several weeks, intimidating messages recurred. Initially, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. Finally, a local artisan states he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many resisting a expensive project where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be demolished and transformed by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," explains the resident. "However the plan aims to dismantle our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that loom over the neighborhood. Dwellings are built haphazardly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

Among some individuals, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or water management and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," explains a chai seller, in his fifties, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The single option is to clear the area and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

But others, like Shaikh, are resisting the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing investment and development. But they worry that this plan – lacking resident participation – is one that will turn premium city property into a playground for the rich, evicting the marginalized, immigrant populations who have resided there since generations ago.

This involved these excluded, displaced people who established the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and business activity, whose production is worth between one million dollars and a substantial sum a year, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly 1 million inhabitants living in the crowded sprawling neighborhood, a minority will be eligible for new homes in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to accomplish. Additional residents will be transferred to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, risking break up a long-established social network. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be given flats in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the organic, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has supported Dharavi for many years.

Industries from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to an allocated "business area" far from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and multi-generational inhabitant to call home this community, the project presents an existential threat. His makeshift, three-storey workshop produces leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – distributed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family lives in the spaces underneath and employees and garment workers – migrants from other states – live there, allowing him to manage costs. Outside the slum, housing costs are often significantly costlier for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the official facilities close by, a visual representation of the Dharavi project depicts a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed people mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring continental baked goods and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a patio outside Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that maintains local residents.

"This is not progress for our community," says the artisan. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will price people out for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists concern of the corporate group. Headed by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Although local authorities describes it as a partnership, the business group paid nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A case claiming that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the business group is pending in the top court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents state they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – comprising phone calls, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the project was equivalent to opposing national interests – by people they claim work for the developer.

Part of the group alleged to have delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c