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For months, intimidating messages continued. Initially, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. Finally, a local artisan states he was called to the police station and told clearly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is one of many opposing a expensive initiative where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and modernized by a large business group.

"The culture of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," explains Shaikh. "But their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and elite residences that overshadow the neighborhood. Residences are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is filled with the overpowering odor of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and homes with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream realized.

"There's no sufficient health services, roads or water management and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," says a tea vendor, in his fifties, who migrated from southern India in the early eighties. "The only way is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, including Shaikh, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. But they fear that this project – absent of resident participation – might turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, forcing out the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these shunned, migrant workers who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose output is valued at between a significant amount and $2m annually, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately a million inhabitants living in the dense 220-hectare neighborhood, a minority will be qualified for new homes in the development, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Additional residents will be moved to barren areas and saline fields on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to fragment a long-established neighborhood. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Residents permitted to remain in the area will be allocated flats in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the evolved, collective approach of residing and operating that has supported this area for so long.

Businesses from clothing production to ceramic crafts and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be moved to a specific "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a workshop owner and long-time inhabitant to call home Dharavi, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey workshop creates apparel – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives resides in the rooms downstairs and his workers and sewers – laborers from north India – reside on-site, allowing him to manage costs. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are often significantly as high for a single room.

Threats and Warning

In the administrative buildings nearby, a visual representation of the Dharavi project shows a contrasting perspective. Well-groomed inhabitants gather on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, purchasing continental baked goods and pastries and socializing on an outdoor area outside Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not development for our community," says Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will render it impossible for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it denies.

Although local authorities describes it as a joint project, the business group invested a significant amount for its controlling interest. A lawsuit stating that the initiative was improperly granted to the corporation is being considered in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to vocally oppose the development, local opponents assert they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – involving messages, clear intimidation and insinuations that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to opposing national interests – by individuals they claim work for the business conglomerate.

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