🔗 Share this article

For months, threatening messages continued. At first, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, subsequently from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is among those resisting a high-value project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The culture of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the planet," states Shaikh. "Yet the plan aims to destroy our community and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the area. Homes are built haphazardly and often without proper sanitation, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream come true.

"We lack proper healthcare, roads or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," explains a chai seller, 56, who moved from southern India in 1982. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, including this protester, are opposing the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. But they fear that this initiative – without public consultation – might transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, working-class residents who have lived there since the late 1800s.

This involved these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is estimated at between $1m and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Of the roughly 1 million inhabitants living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer area, a minority will be eligible for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to finish. Others will be relocated to barren areas and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, threatening to break up a long-established social network. Some will not get homes at all.

Residents permitted to remain in Dharavi will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has sustained this area for so long.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and waste processing are projected to reduce in scale and be transferred to an allocated "commercial zone" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as the leather artisan, a craftsman and multi-generational resident to call home the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-floor operation produces leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

Household members lives in the spaces downstairs and his workers and sewers – laborers from different regions – reside in the same building, enabling him to manage costs. Away from Dharavi's enclave, housing costs are typically 10 times as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the administrative buildings close by, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan depicts a contrasting vision for the future. Slickly dressed inhabitants gather on two-wheelers and eco-friendly transport, acquiring continental baguettes and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't improvement for us," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a massive real estate deal that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also distrust of the development company. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the corporation has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities labels it a joint project, the business group contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A case stating that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the corporation is being considered in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, protesters and community members assert they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including messages, explicit warnings and implications that criticizing the project was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they allege represent the developer.

Included in these accused of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c