🔗 Share this article

For months, threatening messages recurred. Initially, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those opposing a expensive redevelopment plan where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces demolished and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is exceptional in the globe," states Shaikh. "But their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The dank gullies of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and elite residences that loom over the area. Homes are constructed informally and typically missing basic amenities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future come true.

"We lack proper healthcare, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," explains a chai seller, 56, who migrated from southern India in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

Yet certain residents, like Shaikh, are fighting against the redevelopment.

None deny that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this plan – absent of resident participation – could potentially convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, evicting the marginalized, immigrant populations who have been there since the nineteenth century.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and business activity, whose economic value is worth between one million dollars and a substantial sum annually, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about one million inhabitants living in the dense sprawling area, a minority will be qualified for replacement housing in the project, which is projected to take seven years to accomplish. Additional residents will be relocated to barren areas and saline fields on the remote edges of Mumbai, risking fragment a long-established social network. Certain individuals will not get homes at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be allocated apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has sustained this area for many years.

Industries from garment work to pottery and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be transferred to a specific "commercial zone" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a leather artisan and third generation inhabitant to live in this community, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, multi-level operation produces apparel – formal jackets, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – marketed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family resides in the spaces downstairs and employees and tailors – migrants from north India – live in the same building, allowing him to sustain operations. Outside the slum, housing costs are frequently 10 times more expensive for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the government offices nearby, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative illustrates a contrasting vision for the future. Fashionable residents gather on cycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental baguettes and breakfast items and having coffee on a patio near a restaurant and dessert parlor. This depicts a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that maintains the neighborhood.

"This represents no progress for us," explains Shaikh. "It's an enormous land development that will render it impossible for us to survive."

There is also skepticism of the corporate group. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the government head – the business group has encountered allegations of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

While local authorities describes it as a joint project, the corporation paid $950m for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings stating that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the project, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been subjected to an extended period of coercion and warning – comprising messages, direct threats and suggestions that speaking against the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people 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