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Across several weeks, threatening communications continued. Initially, supposedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, subsequently from law enforcement directly. Ultimately, one resident states he was called to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is part of a group opposing a high-value project where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is unparalleled in the world," explains the protester. "But they want to destroy our way of life and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of this community stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and elite residences that dominate the area. Residences are assembled randomly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is permeated by the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or drainage and we have no places for youth to recreate," states a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from his home state in that period. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, like Shaikh, are fighting against the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is in stark need economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this project – absent of community input – could potentially transform valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, forcing out the marginalized, working-class residents who have resided there since the late 1800s.

It was these excluded, migrant workers who established the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and commercial output, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately 1 million residents living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, fewer than half will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take a significant period to accomplish. Additional residents will be transferred to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the remote edges of Mumbai, risking break up a generations-old community. Some will be denied homes at all.

People eligible to continue living in the area will be given apartments in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of residing and operating that has maintained the community for so long.

Industries from tailoring to clay work and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be transferred to an allocated "industrial sector" distant from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time of his family to call home Dharavi, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey facility creates leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

His family resides in the accommodations downstairs and his workers and garment workers – laborers from different regions – also sleep on-site, permitting him to manage costs. Away from this community, accommodation prices are typically significantly costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the official facilities in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative shows an alternative perspective. Fashionable residents move around on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, purchasing continental baked goods and croissants and having coffee on a terrace near a restaurant and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that maintains local residents.

"This isn't progress for us," states the artisan. "This constitutes a huge land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the development company. Managed by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and an associate of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Although the state government describes it as a partnership, the developer invested $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is being considered in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, protesters and community members claim they have been faced ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, clear intimidation and suggestions that criticizing the development was equivalent to speaking against the country – by people they allege represent the corporate group.

Among those accused of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c