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Across several weeks, intimidating messages persisted. Originally, supposedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, later from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was called to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is part of a group resisting a high-value redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," states the protester. "But their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of this community sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the area. Homes are constructed informally and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the overpowering odor of open sewers.

For certain residents, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of premium apartments, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and apartments with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or drainage and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," states A Selvin Nadar, 56, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The sole solution is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

However, some, such as Shaikh, are resisting the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need financial support and improvement. But they fear that this plan – absent of resident participation – could potentially turn premium city property into a luxury development, evicting the marginalized, migrant communities who have been there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these excluded, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and business activity, whose production is valued at between $1m and a substantial sum a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about one million residents living in the dense 220-hectare area, a minority will be able for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be transferred to barren areas and salt plains on the far outskirts of Mumbai, risking break up a historic neighborhood. Some will not get housing at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be provided flats in tower blocks, a substantial change from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has maintained Dharavi for so long.

Industries from clothing production to ceramic crafts and recycling are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to an allocated "industrial sector" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

In the case of the leather artisan, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to reside in this community, the project presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-storey workshop produces apparel – sharp blazers, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

His family lives in the spaces below and his workers and sewers – laborers from other states – live on-site, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside Dharavi's enclave, housing costs are frequently significantly costlier for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

At the administrative buildings nearby, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan depicts a very different perspective. Fashionable residents gather on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying international baked goods and breakfast items and socializing on a terrace outside a restaurant and dessert parlor. This depicts a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that supports the neighborhood.

"This represents no development for residents," says the protester. "This constitutes a massive land development that will price people out for us to survive."

There is also concern of the business conglomerate. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it denies.

While administrative bodies calls it a collaborative effort, the business group paid a significant amount for its majority share. A lawsuit claiming that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the developer is under review in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to publicly resist the development, protesters and community members assert they have been faced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – including messages, clear intimidation and implications that speaking against the project was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by figures they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

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