🔗 Share this article

For months, intimidating messages recurred. Originally, supposedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, subsequently from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan states he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those opposing a high-value initiative where this historic settlement – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be razed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the world," explains the resident. "Yet they want to destroy our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum sit in stark contrast to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that overshadow the settlement. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries produce dangerous fumes and the environment is permeated by the overpowering odor of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and homes with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack proper healthcare, proper streets or water management and there are no spaces for children to play," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who moved from his home state in 1982. "The sole solution is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Resident Opposition

But others, including Shaikh, are resisting the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is desperately requiring investment and development. But they fear that this project – lacking community input – could potentially transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have resided there since generations ago.

It was these excluded, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose economic value is valued at between $1m and $2m annually, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly a million inhabitants living in the crowded 220-hectare area, less than 50% will be qualified for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to complete. Others will be moved to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the metropolis, potentially fragment a historic community. Certain individuals will not get residences at all.

Those allowed to remain in the neighborhood will be given apartments in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the evolved, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained the community for generations.

Commercial activities from tailoring to ceramic crafts and waste processing are projected to decrease in quantity and be relocated to an allocated "business area" far from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

In the case of this protester, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to live in Dharavi, the project presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level facility creates leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – distributed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

Household members lives in the accommodations underneath and employees and garment workers – workers from other states – also sleep in the same building, allowing him to sustain operations. Away from this community, accommodation prices are frequently 10 times costlier for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the administrative buildings nearby, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts an alternative vision for the future. Well-groomed people gather on cycles and eco-friendly transport, buying international baked goods and breakfast items and socializing on a terrace near a restaurant and dessert parlor. This depicts a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This represents no improvement for our community," explains the artisan. "It represents a massive real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists concern of the corporate group. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the national leader – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Even as local authorities labels it a joint project, the corporation contributed $950m for its majority share. A case stating that the initiative was questionably assigned to the corporation is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the project, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – including phone calls, direct threats and insinuations that opposing the initiative was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim are associated with the corporate group.

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