🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, coercive messages continued. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, and then from the police themselves. Ultimately, one resident states he was called to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those resisting a high-value initiative where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is like nowhere else in the globe," says Shaikh. "But they want to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the neighborhood. Homes are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and homes with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, paved pathways or sewage systems and there's nowhere for children to play," says A Selvin Nadar, 56, who migrated from his home state in the early eighties. "The only way is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, including the leather artisan, are resisting the plan.

None deny that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring economic input and modernization. However they fear that this initiative – without community input – could potentially transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these marginalized, migrant workers who developed the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is estimated at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about 1 million inhabitants living in the packed sprawling neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for new homes in the development, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Others will be transferred to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, potentially divide a historic social network. Certain individuals will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the area will be allocated flats in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, collective approach of residing and operating that has supported Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from garment work to clay work and waste processing are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to a designated "industrial sector" distant from homes.

Existential Threat

In the case of Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time resident to reside in this community, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey operation makes garments – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

Household members lives in the spaces below and his workers and tailors – laborers from other states – reside in the same building, permitting him to afford their labour. Away from this community, accommodation prices are often significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the government offices in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative depicts a very different outlook. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on cycles and electric vehicles, purchasing western-style baguettes and breakfast items and having coffee on an outdoor area near Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains local residents.

"This is not progress for us," states the artisan. "It represents an enormous land development that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

There is also distrust of the development company. Headed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the government head – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it denies.

Although administrative bodies labels it a collaborative effort, the developer paid nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. Legal proceedings stating that the initiative was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to vocally oppose the development, local opponents claim they have been experienced an extended period of pressure and threats – involving phone calls, clear intimidation and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was comparable with speaking against the country – by individuals they allege represent the developer.

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