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Over an extended period, coercive communications recurred. Originally, allegedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, later from the authorities. In the end, a local artisan asserts he was summoned to the police station and told clearly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many fighting a high-value initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces razed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," says Shaikh. "Yet they want to destroy our community and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that dominate the area. Dwellings are built haphazardly and often missing basic amenities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and apartments with proper sanitation is an optimistic future come true.

"There's no proper healthcare, paved pathways or water management and there's nowhere for children to play," says a chai seller, 56, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

But others, such as the leather artisan, are fighting against the project.

None deny that the slum, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. But they fear that this initiative – absent of resident participation – is one that will convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have been there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these shunned, displaced people who built up the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and commercial output, whose economic value is valued at between a significant amount and two million dollars a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about one million residents living in the packed 220-hectare area, a minority will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to finish. The remainder will be moved to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of Mumbai, potentially break up a generations-old community. A portion will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to continue living in the neighborhood will be allocated units in tower blocks, a substantial change from the organic, communal way of residing and operating that has supported this area for generations.

Businesses from garment work to pottery and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be relocated to an allocated "industrial sector" separated from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a leather artisan and multi-generational of his family to reside in this community, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, three-floor facility makes garments – sharp blazers, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

His family dwells in the spaces downstairs and his workers and garment workers – laborers from different regions – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to manage costs. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are frequently tenfold as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the government offices close by, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan shows a contrasting perspective. Fashionable residents mill about on cycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental bread and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a terrace near Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that supports Dharavi's community.

"This is not development for residents," states the protester. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Managed by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

While local authorities labels it a partnership, the business group invested a significant amount for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was unfairly awarded to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, protesters and community members state they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving messages, direct threats and insinuations that speaking against the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people they allege work for the developer.

Part of the group alleged to have issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c