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Across several weeks, threatening phone calls persisted. Originally, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group fighting a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be razed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is unparalleled in the world," states the protester. "Yet the plan aims to dismantle our way of life and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of this community stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Homes are built haphazardly and often lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the atmosphere is saturated with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

Among some individuals, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream achieved.

"We lack sufficient health services, proper streets or water management and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," says a chai seller, 56, who migrated from southern India in 1982. "The only way is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, such as the leather artisan, are opposing the plan.

All recognize that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. However they fear that this project – absent of public consultation – might convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, evicting the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these shunned, displaced people who built up the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and commercial output, whose economic value is worth between a significant amount and $2m per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly 1 million people living in the dense 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be qualified for replacement housing in the development, which is expected to take seven years to finish. The remainder will be relocated to barren areas and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, threatening to break up a long-established neighborhood. A portion will receive no residences at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the area will be allocated units in tower blocks, a major break from the organic, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has maintained Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are projected to decrease in quantity and be moved to a specific "commercial zone" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time inhabitant to call home the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His rickety, multi-level facility produces garments – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members lives in the spaces below and his workers and garment workers – migrants from other states – reside there, allowing him to sustain operations. Away from this community, accommodation prices are often tenfold more expensive for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the official facilities close by, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan illustrates a very different vision for the future. Slickly dressed inhabitants mill about on bicycles and e-vehicles, purchasing international baguettes and breakfast items and socializing on a patio adjacent to a restaurant and treat station. This depicts a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not progress for our community," says the protester. "This constitutes a massive land development that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Headed by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Even as administrative bodies labels it a partnership, the corporation invested $950m for its controlling interest. A lawsuit alleging that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the corporation is under review in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to publicly resist the project, local opponents state they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – including phone calls, direct threats and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was equivalent to speaking against the country – by figures they claim work for the business conglomerate.

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