🔗 Share this article

For months, threatening messages persisted. At first, supposedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from the authorities. In the end, a local artisan claims he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is among those resisting a multimillion-dollar project where one of India's largest slums – a massive informal community with rich history – faces bulldozed and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is exceptional in the globe," states Shaikh. "Yet they want to eradicate our way of life and prevent our protests."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are assembled randomly and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and homes with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream come true.

"We lack proper healthcare, roads or sewage systems and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The single option is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

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

All recognize that Dharavi, historically ignored as informal housing, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. Yet they worry that this project – without public consultation – might turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, working-class residents who have lived there since the late 1800s.

This involved these marginalized, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and business activity, whose output is estimated at between a significant amount and a substantial sum per year, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Resettlement Issues

Of the roughly 1 million residents living in the dense sprawling zone, a minority will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Others will be moved to barren areas and coastal regions on the remote edges of the metropolis, threatening to break up a generations-old neighborhood. A portion will receive no residences at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be allocated flats in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the organic, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for generations.

Commercial activities from clothing production to ceramic crafts and recycling are projected to reduce in scale and be transferred to a designated "industrial sector" far from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to live in the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His informal, three-floor operation produces garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, fashionable garments – distributed in premium stores in south Mumbai and internationally.

Household members resides in the spaces below and laborers and sewers – workers from north India – also sleep on-site, enabling him to sustain operations. Beyond the slum, Mumbai rents are typically significantly costlier for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the government offices close by, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan illustrates a very different perspective. Slickly dressed people gather on cycles and e-vehicles, purchasing international baked goods and pastries and having coffee on a patio near a coffee shop and treat station. It is a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that supports the neighborhood.

"This is not progress for residents," says the artisan. "This constitutes a huge land development that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the development company. Run by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Although local authorities describes it as a joint project, the corporation paid $950m for its majority share. Legal proceedings stating that the project was unfairly awarded to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been faced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – comprising messages, clear intimidation and implications that speaking against the development was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they allege represent the business conglomerate.

Included in these alleged to have delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c