🔗 Share this article

For months, intimidating phone calls persisted. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan asserts he was summoned to the local precinct and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group opposing a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – a massive informal community with rich history – will be razed and redeveloped by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of this area is unparalleled in the globe," explains the resident. "But they want to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and elite residences that overshadow the settlement. Dwellings are built haphazardly and often lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is filled with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of premium apartments, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or drainage and there are no spaces for youth to recreate," explains a tea vendor, 56, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, such as this protester, are fighting against the redevelopment.

None deny that Dharavi, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. Yet they are concerned that this plan – absent of community input – might convert valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, displacing the marginalized, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who built up the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and commercial output, whose economic value is worth between one million dollars and two million dollars a year, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about one million residents living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, a minority will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take seven years to complete. Additional residents will be relocated to barren areas and coastal regions on the remote edges of the city, potentially break up a generations-old neighborhood. Certain individuals will be denied housing at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the area will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has supported this area for many years.

Commercial activities from garment work to ceramic crafts and waste processing are projected to shrink in number and be relocated to a specific "business area" distant from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a leather artisan and multi-generational inhabitant to call home this community, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-floor operation makes garments – sharp blazers, suede trenches, fashionable garments – sold in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Relatives resides in the rooms underneath and laborers and garment workers – laborers from other states – reside in the same building, enabling him to manage costs. Beyond this community, housing costs are frequently 10 times more expensive for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

In the government offices nearby, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting vision for the future. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring continental baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a terrace near a restaurant and dessert parlor. It is a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that supports the neighborhood.

"This isn't development for residents," says the protester. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will price people out for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the corporate group. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the government head – the business group has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

While local authorities labels it a collaborative effort, the business group invested a significant amount for its majority share. A lawsuit stating that the project was unfairly awarded to the business group is under review in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to actively protest the project, protesters and community members state they have been experienced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including messages, clear intimidation and implications that speaking against the project was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim represent the developer.

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