🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, coercive phone calls continued. At first, allegedly from a retired cop and an ex-military commander, and then from the authorities. Ultimately, one resident claims he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a high-value project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be demolished and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is unparalleled in the world," explains the protester. "But their intention is to eradicate our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of Dharavi sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that dominate the settlement. Homes are built haphazardly and often missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is permeated by the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and residences with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream realized.

"There's no proper healthcare, paved pathways or water management and we have no places for children to play," states A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The only way is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

But others, including Shaikh, are fighting against the project.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they fear that this initiative – absent of public consultation – could potentially convert valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, forcing out the lower-caste, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

It was these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is worth between one million dollars and two million dollars per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about one million residents living in the crowded sprawling area, less than 50% will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the project, which is estimated to take seven years to finish. Additional residents will be moved to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the far outskirts of Mumbai, risking fragment a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in Dharavi will be provided units in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has sustained the community for generations.

Businesses from clothing production to clay work and recycling are likely to shrink in number and be moved to a designated "business area" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For residents like the leather artisan, a craftsman and third generation of his family to reside in this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level facility produces leather coats – sharp blazers, suede trenches, decorated jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

Household members dwells in the spaces downstairs and employees and sewers – migrants from north India – live there, permitting him to manage costs. Beyond Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are typically 10 times as high for minimal space.

Threats and Warning

In the administrative buildings close by, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative depicts a contrasting outlook. Slickly dressed inhabitants mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, purchasing western-style baked goods and breakfast items and having coffee on a terrace outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This is not improvement for us," states the protester. "It's a huge property transaction that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Although local authorities calls it a joint project, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings claiming that the initiative was questionably assigned to the developer is being considered in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving messages, clear intimidation and suggestions that opposing the initiative was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim represent the corporate group.

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