🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, threatening phone calls continued. At first, supposedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be bulldozed and modernized by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is unparalleled in the planet," explains the resident. "Yet the plan aims to destroy our way of life and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and often missing basic amenities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

For certain residents, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and residences with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future achieved.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, proper streets or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," states a tea vendor, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in that period. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

However, some, including this protester, are opposing the plan.

None deny that this community, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need investment and development. Yet they fear that this project – lacking resident participation – might transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, forcing out the lower-caste, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose production is worth between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about one million inhabitants living in the dense sprawling area, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the project, which is estimated to take a significant period to complete. The remainder will be moved to barren areas and salt plains on the far outskirts of Mumbai, threatening to divide a historic community. A portion will receive no homes at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be provided flats in tower blocks, a substantial change from the organic, shared lifestyle of living and working that has supported the community for so long.

Businesses from garment work to pottery and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" separated from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time resident to live in Dharavi, the plan presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level operation creates apparel – tailored coats, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family dwells in the rooms below and his workers and garment workers – workers from other states – live in the same building, allowing him to sustain operations. Away from Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are frequently significantly more expensive for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the administrative buildings close by, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows an alternative perspective. Fashionable inhabitants move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, buying western-style baguettes and pastries and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area near a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that sustains local residents.

"This represents no improvement for us," states Shaikh. "It's a massive property transaction that will price people out for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Even as administrative bodies calls it a collaborative effort, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A case claiming that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to publicly resist the project, local opponents assert they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including communications, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim work for the developer.

Among those suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c