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For months, threatening communications persisted. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, subsequently from the authorities. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was summoned to the police station and warned explicitly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is part of a group resisting a expensive initiative where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces bulldozed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is like nowhere else in the world," says the resident. "However their intention is to destroy our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and elite residences that dominate the area. Residences are assembled randomly and typically lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the air is saturated with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream realized.

"There's no proper healthcare, roads or drainage and we have no places for children to play," states a tea vendor, in his fifties, who migrated from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Local Protest

However, some, such as this protester, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, long neglected as informal housing, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this initiative – lacking resident participation – might transform premium city property into a playground for the rich, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

These were these marginalized, migrant workers who developed the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and business activity, whose output is worth between $1m and two million dollars a year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately 1 million residents living in the packed sprawling zone, less than 50% will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to complete. The remainder will be relocated to undeveloped zones and saline fields on the distant periphery of the metropolis, threatening to break up a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will not get residences at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, communal way of residing and operating that has supported this area for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to clay work and material recovery are projected to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a designated "industrial sector" separated from homes.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time inhabitant to reside in this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-storey operation produces garments – tailored coats, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Relatives resides in the spaces underneath and employees and sewers – laborers from north India – also sleep on-site, enabling him to afford their labour. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are typically significantly as high for a single room.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the official facilities in the vicinity, a visual representation of the Dharavi project depicts a very different outlook. Slickly dressed inhabitants mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental bread and croissants and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. It is a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This is not improvement for us," says the protester. "It's a massive land development that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

There is also distrust of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the business group has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it denies.

Even as the state government describes it as a partnership, the corporation contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit stating that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the corporation is pending in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to actively protest the development, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – involving communications, direct threats and implications that opposing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim work for the business conglomerate.

Among those suspected of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c