🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, threatening messages recurred. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, later from law enforcement directly. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those fighting a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of this area is exceptional in the globe," says the resident. "But their intention is to destroy our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the area. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and homes with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or drainage and we have no places for kids to enjoy," says a tea vendor, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The only way is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, like this protester, are resisting the project.

None deny that Dharavi, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. Yet they worry that this project – lacking community input – might turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, working-class residents who have resided there since generations ago.

It was these excluded, displaced people who built up the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and business activity, whose output is estimated at between $1m and $2m a year, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately 1 million people living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be eligible for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to complete. Additional residents will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, potentially divide a historic neighborhood. A portion will receive no housing at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the area will be given units in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the evolved, shared lifestyle of living and working that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Commercial activities from clothing production to clay work and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a specific "commercial zone" separated from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to live in Dharavi, the plan presents an existential threat. His informal, three-floor workshop produces leather coats – sharp blazers, luxury coats, fashionable garments – distributed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Relatives resides in the rooms underneath and laborers and garment workers – laborers from north India – live on-site, permitting him to sustain operations. Away from the slum, Mumbai rents are typically 10 times as high for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the government offices in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting perspective. Fashionable people move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, buying western-style baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a terrace outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This depicts a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that supports Dharavi's community.

"This represents no development for our community," states Shaikh. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's concern of the development company. Run by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the conglomerate has faced accusations of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as administrative bodies calls it a joint project, the developer invested a significant amount for its majority share. A case stating that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the corporation is pending in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

From when they initiated to vocally oppose the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including messages, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the development was tantamount to speaking against the country – by figures they claim work for the business conglomerate.

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