🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, intimidating messages persisted. At first, allegedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan states he was ordered to the local precinct and told clearly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is one of many fighting a high-value project where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and transformed by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," states Shaikh. "But their intention is to destroy our way of life and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of this community sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that dominate the area. Residences are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the air is filled with the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

Among some individuals, the prospect of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of premium apartments, neat parks, contemporary malls and apartments with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have proper healthcare, paved pathways or drainage and we have no places for kids to enjoy," explains A Selvin Nadar, 56, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, like the leather artisan, are opposing the project.

None deny that the slum, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. But they fear that this plan – lacking public consultation – is one that will turn valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, displacing the marginalized, migrant communities who have resided there since generations ago.

This involved these marginalized, relocated individuals who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose production is estimated at between $1m and two million dollars a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about a million people living in the dense sprawling neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to finish. Others will be moved to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, potentially divide a long-established community. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be provided units in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from clothing production to ceramic crafts and waste processing are projected to shrink in number and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" separated from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For those such as Shaikh, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to reside in the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey facility creates apparel – sharp blazers, suede trenches, decorated jackets – sold in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Relatives dwells in the rooms underneath and laborers and sewers – laborers from north India – live in the same building, allowing him to manage costs. Outside the slum, housing costs are typically tenfold more expensive for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the government offices in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project shows a very different outlook. Well-groomed residents mill about on cycles and electric vehicles, acquiring international baguettes and croissants and socializing on an outdoor area near a coffee shop and treat station. This represents a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't progress for residents," says the artisan. "It represents a huge land development that will price people out for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – a leading figure and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it denies.

Even as the state government describes it as a collaborative effort, the corporation paid $950m for its controlling interest. A case claiming that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the corporation is under review in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to publicly resist the development, protesters and community members state they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – including messages, clear intimidation and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by figures they claim represent the developer.

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