🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, threatening messages continued. At first, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, subsequently from the authorities. Finally, one resident states he was called to the local precinct and warned explicitly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is part of a group opposing a expensive redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – a massive informal community with rich history – will be demolished and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is exceptional in the planet," explains Shaikh. "However the plan aims to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and elite residences that overshadow the neighborhood. Dwellings are assembled randomly and often missing basic amenities, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the air is saturated with the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream come true.

"We don't have sufficient health services, proper streets or drainage and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," says a chai seller, 56, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, such as the leather artisan, are opposing the plan.

All recognize that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need investment and development. Yet they fear that this project – absent of community input – is one that will transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have resided there since the late 1800s.

This involved these marginalized, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and business activity, whose production is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it one of the world's largest unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about 1 million inhabitants living in the crowded 220-hectare neighborhood, fewer than half will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, threatening to divide a generations-old neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no residences at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the area will be given apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has maintained the community for generations.

Industries from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to decrease in quantity and be moved to a designated "industrial sector" separated from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as Shaikh, a craftsman and third generation of his family to live in Dharavi, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, multi-level facility creates leather coats – formal jackets, suede trenches, fashionable garments – marketed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family lives in the rooms downstairs and his workers and garment workers – workers from north India – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Beyond Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are typically significantly as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the administrative buildings in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative shows a very different outlook. Well-groomed people mill about on cycles and electric vehicles, purchasing international baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a patio near Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not progress for our community," states the protester. "It represents an enormous property transaction that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has faced accusations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Although the state government calls it a joint project, the business group invested $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, local opponents assert they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including communications, clear intimidation and suggestions that criticizing the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by figures they assert work for the corporate group.

Included in these accused of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c