🔗 Share this article

For months, threatening messages recurred. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Ultimately, one resident states he was ordered to the police station and told clearly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is part of a group fighting a high-value project where this historic settlement – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of the slum is like nowhere else in the world," explains Shaikh. "Yet they want to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of this community sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and elite residences that dominate the area. Dwellings are built haphazardly and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is filled with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

Among some individuals, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision come true.

"There's no proper healthcare, paved pathways or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," states a tea vendor, 56, who moved from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The only way is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

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

None deny that this community, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing investment and development. However they are concerned that this project – absent of resident participation – is one that will convert premium city property into a playground for the rich, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these excluded, relocated individuals who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and economic productivity, whose output is estimated at between $1m and $2m per year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately a million people living in the dense 220-hectare area, a minority will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is estimated to take a significant period to finish. Additional residents will be moved to wastelands and coastal regions on the far outskirts of Mumbai, risking break up a long-established neighborhood. A portion will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be provided units in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has supported this area for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are expected to reduce in scale and be transferred to a designated "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and third generation of his family to live in the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-floor operation makes leather coats – sharp blazers, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Relatives resides in the rooms downstairs and his workers and sewers – laborers from different regions – also sleep there, enabling him to afford their labour. Away from this community, housing costs are typically significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the government offices nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan shows a very different outlook. Slickly dressed residents mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, acquiring continental baked goods and croissants and socializing on an outdoor area near a restaurant and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains local residents.

"This isn't development for us," says the artisan. "This constitutes a huge property transaction that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists distrust of the business conglomerate. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has faced accusations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Although administrative bodies calls it a partnership, the business group invested $950m for its controlling interest. A lawsuit claiming that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the project, protesters and community members assert they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including phone calls, direct threats and suggestions that opposing the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by individuals they assert work for the business conglomerate.

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