🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, coercive messages continued. At first, supposedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, subsequently from the police themselves. Ultimately, one resident states he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is one of many fighting a expensive redevelopment plan where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces razed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is exceptional in the world," explains the resident. "However the plan aims to destroy our way of life and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that overshadow the neighborhood. Dwellings are built haphazardly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations produce dangerous fumes and the air is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, neat parks, contemporary malls and homes with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future come true.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, proper streets or drainage and there are no spaces for youth to recreate," explains a chai seller, 56, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, like this protester, are resisting the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. But they fear that this initiative – without resident participation – is one that will transform premium city property into a playground for the rich, forcing out the marginalized, working-class residents who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and business activity, whose production is valued at between one million dollars and two million dollars per year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly one million inhabitants living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, less than 50% will be qualified for new homes in the redevelopment, which is projected to take seven years to accomplish. Additional residents will be transferred to barren areas and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, risking divide a generations-old community. A portion will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the neighborhood will be provided units in high-rise buildings, a major break from the organic, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for many years.

Commercial activities from clothing production to ceramic crafts and recycling are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to a specific "industrial sector" distant from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and third generation inhabitant to call home the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His informal, multi-level facility creates garments – sharp blazers, suede trenches, fashionable garments – marketed in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

His family lives in the spaces below and his workers and sewers – migrants from other states – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are frequently tenfold costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the administrative buildings nearby, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan illustrates an alternative outlook. Slickly dressed residents mill about on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring continental baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a terrace adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that sustains local residents.

"This represents no development for us," says the artisan. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists concern of the development company. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Although administrative bodies describes it as a collaborative effort, the corporation paid $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings alleging that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, protesters and community members claim they have been subjected to an extended period of pressure and threats – comprising communications, direct threats and implications that criticizing the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by figures they claim represent the developer.

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