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For months, coercive phone calls recurred. Initially, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, subsequently from the authorities. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was called to the local precinct and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a high-value redevelopment plan where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," explains the resident. "However they want to dismantle our way of life and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that loom over the area. Homes are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of premium apartments, organized recreational areas, modern retail complexes and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future come true.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or sewage systems and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," states a tea vendor, fifty-six, who migrated from southern India in that period. "The sole solution is to clear the area and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

But others, including the leather artisan, are opposing the project.

All recognize that this community, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they worry that this plan – absent of community input – is one that will transform valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, displacing the marginalized, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these shunned, migrant workers who established the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and $2m annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly 1 million residents living in the packed sprawling area, a minority will be eligible for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Others will be transferred to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, risking fragment a generations-old community. A portion will not get homes at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the neighborhood will be given flats in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has maintained the community for generations.

Industries from clothing production to clay work and material recovery are projected to reduce in scale and be transferred to an allocated "industrial sector" far from people's residences.

Livelihood Crisis

In the case of the leather artisan, a leather artisan and long-time of his family to call home this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-floor operation creates apparel – sharp blazers, luxury coats, decorated jackets – distributed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and overseas.

His family dwells in the rooms below and employees and tailors – laborers from north India – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are frequently 10 times costlier for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the official facilities nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates a contrasting perspective. Slickly dressed inhabitants move around on cycles and electric vehicles, buying western-style bread and breakfast items and socializing on a terrace outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. It is a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that sustains Dharavi's community.

"This represents no development for us," explains Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

There is also concern of the development company. Headed by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

While local authorities calls it a partnership, the business group paid $950m for its majority share. A lawsuit alleging that the initiative was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to vocally oppose the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – comprising messages, clear intimidation and insinuations that criticizing the development was equivalent to opposing national interests – by figures they assert work for the business conglomerate.

Among those alleged to have making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c