🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, coercive phone calls persisted. At first, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was ordered to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

This third-generation resident is among those opposing a high-value initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be demolished and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is like nowhere else in the planet," explains Shaikh. "But the plan aims to eradicate our community and prevent our protests."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the area. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision come true.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, roads or drainage and we have no places for children to play," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who relocated from his home state in that period. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

However, some, like the leather artisan, are fighting against the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, long neglected as informal housing, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. But they worry that this project – lacking community input – is one that will transform valuable urban land into an elite enclave, displacing the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have resided there since the late 1800s.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who developed the empty marshland into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and commercial output, whose output is estimated at between $1m and two million dollars per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about one million people living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, less than 50% will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Others will be relocated to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, risking break up a long-established neighborhood. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be given flats in tower blocks, a major break from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Industries from clothing production to ceramic crafts and material recovery are projected to shrink in number and be moved to a designated "industrial sector" separated from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a leather artisan and multi-generational inhabitant to live in the slum, the project presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey operation makes apparel – tailored coats, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members dwells in the accommodations underneath and laborers and tailors – laborers from different regions – reside on-site, permitting him to afford their labour. Outside the slum, housing costs are frequently 10 times costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the government offices close by, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project shows an alternative perspective. Slickly dressed inhabitants gather on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international baked goods and pastries and having coffee on a patio outside a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a world away from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that supports Dharavi's community.

"This represents no progress for residents," says Shaikh. "It represents an enormous real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the development company. Run by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Even as the state government labels it a joint project, the corporation invested nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A lawsuit stating that the initiative was improperly granted to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to actively protest the project, protesters and community members assert they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – comprising messages, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the project was tantamount to speaking against the country – by figures they claim are associated with the developer.

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