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For months, threatening phone calls recurred. Initially, supposedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, and then from law enforcement directly. In the end, one resident claims he was ordered to the police station and told clearly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many opposing a high-value initiative where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and redeveloped by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of this area is unparalleled in the globe," explains the resident. "Yet their intention is to destroy our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the area. Homes are assembled randomly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of premium apartments, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, paved pathways or drainage and we have no places for youth to recreate," explains A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, such as this protester, are fighting against the plan.

All recognize that Dharavi, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need economic input and modernization. Yet they worry that this plan – lacking community input – could potentially transform premium city property into a luxury development, forcing out the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these shunned, relocated individuals who built up the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and business activity, whose output is worth between $1m and $2m per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately a million people living in the crowded sprawling neighborhood, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take a significant period to finish. Others will be moved to barren areas and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, threatening to break up a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will not get residences at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be allocated apartments in tower blocks, a substantial change from the natural, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for many years.

Industries from clothing production to clay work and waste processing are projected to reduce in scale and be relocated to an allocated "industrial sector" separated from homes.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a craftsman and multi-generational resident to live in this community, the plan presents an existential threat. His makeshift, three-floor operation produces leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – sold in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

His family dwells in the rooms below and laborers and sewers – laborers from different regions – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from this community, Mumbai rents are typically tenfold more expensive for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the official facilities nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates a contrasting outlook. Fashionable residents gather on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying international bread and pastries and socializing on a terrace adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that maintains local residents.

"This is not development for residents," explains the artisan. "This constitutes a massive real estate deal that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the national leader – the business group has faced accusations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Even as the state government describes it as a partnership, the business group invested $950m for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings stating that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to vocally oppose the development, local opponents state they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – including phone calls, clear intimidation and suggestions that criticizing the project was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim are associated with the developer.

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