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Across several weeks, threatening phone calls recurred. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from law enforcement directly. Finally, a local artisan claims he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a expensive redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is like nowhere else in the world," states the resident. "However they want to dismantle our community and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of this community present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and often lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is filled with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, neat parks, modern retail complexes and homes with two toilets is an optimistic future realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or water management and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," says a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The single option is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, such as this protester, are fighting against the project.

None deny that the slum, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. However they worry that this initiative – lacking public consultation – might turn valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, forcing out the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have been there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and commercial output, whose output is valued at between one million dollars and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Relocation Worries

Out of about one million inhabitants living in the packed 220-hectare area, fewer than half will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, risking divide a generations-old social network. A portion will not get housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be given flats in multi-story structures, a major break from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has supported this area for many years.

Industries from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are projected to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a designated "business area" distant from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

In the case of this protester, a craftsman and third generation of his family to reside in this community, the plan presents an existential threat. His informal, multi-level operation makes apparel – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Household members lives in the rooms downstairs and laborers and tailors – laborers from north India – reside in the same building, permitting him to afford their labour. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are often significantly more expensive for minimal space.

Threats and Warning

Within the government offices close by, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan depicts a very different outlook. Fashionable residents mill about on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, acquiring continental bread and croissants and socializing on a patio outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that maintains local residents.

"This is not progress for our community," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a huge real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and a close ally of the government head – the business group has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Even as administrative bodies labels it a joint project, the business group paid $950m for its 80% stake. A case claiming that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to actively protest the redevelopment, local opponents claim they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – including messages, direct threats and implications that opposing the development was equivalent to opposing national interests – by people they claim work for the developer.

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