🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, intimidating messages persisted. Originally, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those fighting a multimillion-dollar project where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be razed and redeveloped by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of this area is exceptional in the world," states the resident. "Yet their intention is to eradicate our community and prevent our protests."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that overshadow the settlement. Residences are assembled randomly and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the air is saturated with the overpowering odor of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream come true.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or drainage and we have no places for youth to recreate," states A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The only way is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Resident Opposition

But others, like the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

All recognize that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is in stark need financial support and improvement. But they are concerned that this initiative – absent of community input – might transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these marginalized, migrant workers who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is valued at between $1m and two million dollars annually, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately a million inhabitants living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Additional residents will be transferred to barren areas and coastal regions on the remote edges of Mumbai, potentially divide a generations-old neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be provided flats in tower blocks, a substantial change from the organic, collective approach of living and working that has supported this area for many years.

Businesses from clothing production to clay work and recycling are likely to shrink in number and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

In the case of the leather artisan, a workshop owner and long-time resident to call home Dharavi, the project presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-floor facility creates apparel – formal jackets, suede trenches, fashionable garments – sold in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

Relatives lives in the spaces downstairs and laborers and garment workers – laborers from north India – live in the same building, allowing him to sustain operations. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are frequently significantly costlier for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the administrative buildings in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts a contrasting outlook. Slickly dressed inhabitants move around on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, buying western-style baguettes and croissants and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This is not progress for us," says the protester. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will render it impossible for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it denies.

While administrative bodies describes it as a partnership, the corporation invested nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A lawsuit alleging that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the developer is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to actively protest the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – comprising messages, explicit warnings and suggestions that criticizing the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by figures they assert work for the developer.

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