🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, coercive phone calls continued. Initially, supposedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, subsequently from the authorities. In the end, one resident asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is among those opposing a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – a massive informal community with rich history – will be razed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The culture of this area is like nowhere else in the planet," explains the resident. "But their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are assembled randomly and often without proper sanitation, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or sewage systems and there are no spaces for children to play," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

But others, including Shaikh, are resisting the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. However they fear that this plan – without community input – could potentially convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, forcing out the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have been there since generations ago.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who developed the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is estimated at between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly 1 million people living in the dense 220-hectare neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the project, which is projected to take seven years to accomplish. The remainder will be transferred to barren areas and saline fields on the far outskirts of Mumbai, threatening to break up a historic neighborhood. Some will be denied residences at all.

Residents permitted to remain in Dharavi will be given apartments in high-rise buildings, a major break from the organic, communal way of living and working that has supported Dharavi for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be transferred to an allocated "business area" separated from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and multi-generational of his family to reside in the slum, the project presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-floor workshop produces garments – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members lives in the rooms underneath and laborers and tailors – laborers from different regions – also sleep on-site, enabling him to manage costs. Away from this community, accommodation prices are typically significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

At the government offices nearby, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan illustrates a contrasting outlook. Well-groomed inhabitants mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international bread and breakfast items and socializing on an outdoor area outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. This depicts a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that sustains the neighborhood.

"This isn't progress for our community," explains the artisan. "It's an enormous property transaction that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also skepticism of the development company. Managed by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has faced accusations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities describes it as a collaborative effort, the business group paid a significant amount for its majority share. Legal proceedings stating that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, protesters and community members claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – comprising phone calls, explicit warnings and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to opposing national interests – by individuals they claim represent the developer.

Part of the group accused of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c