🔗 Share this article

For months, coercive communications recurred. Originally, reportedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, subsequently from law enforcement directly. In the end, one resident claims he was ordered to the local precinct and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is among those fighting a expensive initiative where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces razed and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is like nowhere else in the globe," explains Shaikh. "But the plan aims to dismantle our way of life and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the settlement. Residences are built haphazardly and often lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the prospect of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream come true.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or sewage systems and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, 56, who moved from southern India in that period. "The single option is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, like Shaikh, are resisting the project.

None deny that this community, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is desperately requiring economic input and modernization. Yet they are concerned that this project – without community input – might transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, evicting the marginalized, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these excluded, displaced people who built up the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose production is valued at between a significant amount and $2m per year, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately a million residents living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, fewer than half will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to finish. Others will be moved to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, potentially divide a historic community. A portion will receive no housing at all.

Residents permitted to remain in Dharavi will be provided apartments in tower blocks, a substantial change from the organic, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained the community for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to clay work and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be relocated to a designated "business area" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and third generation resident to live in this community, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, multi-level operation makes leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – distributed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives resides in the spaces below and laborers and garment workers – laborers from different regions – also sleep there, permitting him to manage costs. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are frequently tenfold as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

In the administrative buildings nearby, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative illustrates a very different perspective. Fashionable inhabitants move around on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying continental bread and pastries and having coffee on an outdoor area outside a restaurant and treat station. It is a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that supports local residents.

"This represents no progress for us," explains the protester. "This constitutes a huge property transaction that will price people out for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the development company. Headed by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and a supporter of the government head – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Even as the state government calls it a collaborative effort, the business group paid $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to actively protest the development, protesters and community members state they have been subjected to an extended period of coercion and warning – comprising communications, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the initiative was equivalent to speaking against the country – by figures they allege are associated with the developer.

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