🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, threatening phone calls persisted. At first, allegedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, subsequently from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was called to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is among those opposing a high-value redevelopment plan where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces demolished and transformed by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is unparalleled in the world," explains the protester. "But they want to destroy our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is filled with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

Among some individuals, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of high-end towers, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and apartments with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or water management and there's nowhere for children to play," explains a chai seller, fifty-six, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

However, some, like the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

None deny that this community, long neglected as informal housing, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. But they worry that this project – without community input – could potentially transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, evicting the lower-caste, working-class residents who have lived there since generations ago.

These were these marginalized, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and business activity, whose output is valued at between a significant amount and $2m a year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly a million inhabitants living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be able for new homes in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to complete. Others will be transferred to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the distant periphery of Mumbai, threatening to fragment a historic neighborhood. A portion will receive no residences at all.

Those allowed to continue living in the neighborhood will be allocated flats in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the natural, communal way of living and working that has sustained this area for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and recycling are projected to decrease in quantity and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" far from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For those such as this protester, a workshop owner and multi-generational resident to call home the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey facility makes garments – sharp blazers, suede trenches, decorated jackets – marketed in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

Relatives resides in the rooms underneath and employees and tailors – migrants from different regions – also sleep on-site, permitting him to afford their labour. Beyond Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are frequently significantly costlier for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the administrative buildings close by, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan illustrates an alternative vision for the future. Well-groomed residents move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, acquiring western-style baguettes and croissants and having coffee on a patio adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that supports Dharavi's community.

"This isn't progress for residents," says Shaikh. "It's a massive real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the development company. Run by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities labels it a collaborative effort, the corporation contributed $950m for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in India's supreme court.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they assert are associated with the corporate group.

Among those accused of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c