🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, threatening communications persisted. Originally, allegedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, subsequently from law enforcement directly. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was summoned to the police station and told clearly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is among those resisting a high-value initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces razed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is exceptional in the world," states Shaikh. "But the plan aims to dismantle our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the area. Residences are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the atmosphere is filled with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and residences with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future achieved.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, proper streets or sewage systems and there are no spaces for children to play," states a chai seller, 56, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

But others, like Shaikh, are resisting the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. Yet they worry that this project – lacking public consultation – is one that will convert valuable urban land into a luxury development, displacing the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have been there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, displaced people who developed the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of community resilience and business activity, whose production is estimated at between a significant amount and a substantial sum annually, making it a major informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Of the roughly 1 million people living in the crowded 220-hectare area, less than 50% will be eligible for new homes in the redevelopment, which is expected to take a significant period to finish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and coastal regions on the remote edges of the metropolis, threatening to break up a generations-old neighborhood. A portion will be denied housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be allocated units in multi-story structures, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has supported this area for generations.

Businesses from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are likely to shrink in number and be transferred to a specific "industrial sector" separated from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For residents like the leather artisan, a leather artisan and multi-generational resident to live in the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level facility makes leather coats – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the spaces downstairs and employees and garment workers – workers from north India – reside in the same building, enabling him to manage costs. Away from the slum, Mumbai rents are typically significantly costlier for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

At the official facilities in the vicinity, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting perspective. Slickly dressed residents move around on two-wheelers and eco-friendly transport, purchasing western-style bread and pastries and having coffee on a terrace adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a world away from the affordable idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that sustains the neighborhood.

"This isn't progress for us," explains the artisan. "It represents an enormous land development that will price people out for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Although the state government describes it as a joint project, the corporation contributed a significant amount for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings alleging that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the developer is under review in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, local opponents assert they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including communications, clear intimidation and insinuations that criticizing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they allege represent the corporate group.

Included in these suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c