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Across several weeks, threatening messages persisted. Initially, allegedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, and then from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to the police station and warned explicitly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is part of a group fighting a high-value redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be bulldozed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," explains the protester. "However the plan aims to eradicate our community and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of Dharavi sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are built haphazardly and typically lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the atmosphere is saturated with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

To some, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and residences with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision come true.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," says a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

However, some, like this protester, are fighting against the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. But they worry that this initiative – absent of public consultation – is one that will turn valuable urban land into a luxury development, evicting the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and commercial output, whose production is worth between one million dollars and a substantial sum annually, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about one million people living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer area, fewer than half will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take a significant period to finish. Others will be moved to barren areas and coastal regions on the remote edges of Mumbai, threatening to break up a generations-old social network. A portion will be denied housing at all.

People eligible to continue living in the area will be allocated apartments in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the natural, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to pottery and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be moved to a specific "industrial sector" far from homes.

Survival Challenge

In the case of the leather artisan, a craftsman and third generation resident to live in the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-storey facility produces garments – tailored coats, luxury coats, decorated jackets – sold in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members dwells in the accommodations below and employees and tailors – laborers from north India – reside there, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside this community, housing costs are often 10 times as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the administrative buildings close by, a visual representation of the transformation initiative depicts a very different perspective. Fashionable residents mill about on cycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental baked goods and breakfast items and socializing on a patio near a coffee shop and dessert parlor. It is a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that supports local residents.

"This is not progress for residents," says Shaikh. "It's an enormous property transaction that will price people out for our community to continue."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the corporate group. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the conglomerate has faced accusations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

While administrative bodies describes it as a collaborative effort, the developer invested nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A case alleging that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the business group is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to publicly resist the development, local opponents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – involving phone calls, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the project was equivalent to speaking against the country – by people they allege work for the business conglomerate.

Among those accused of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c