🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, threatening communications continued. Originally, supposedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims he was called to the police station and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is one of many fighting a expensive redevelopment plan where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – will be razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

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

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and elite residences that dominate the neighborhood. Residences are constructed informally and frequently lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the prospect of Dharavi transformed into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We don't have sufficient health services, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

But others, including this protester, are fighting against the project.

All recognize that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need financial support and improvement. Yet they fear that this project – without public consultation – is one that will convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, evicting the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

These were these shunned, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and business activity, whose output is worth between a significant amount and two million dollars annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately 1 million inhabitants living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer area, a minority will be able for new homes in the project, which is expected to take seven years to complete. Additional residents will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, risking fragment a historic neighborhood. Some will not get housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the neighborhood will be given apartments in multi-story structures, a major break from the evolved, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has sustained the community for generations.

Commercial activities from clothing production to ceramic crafts and recycling are likely to shrink in number and be relocated to an allocated "business area" far from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For those such as the leather artisan, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to call home the slum, the plan presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-storey facility produces garments – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

His family dwells in the rooms downstairs and his workers and garment workers – migrants from other states – live in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Beyond the slum, housing costs are typically significantly more expensive for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the administrative buildings in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan shows a very different outlook. Well-groomed residents mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental bread and croissants and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area near Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. This depicts a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't progress for residents," explains Shaikh. "It's a huge land development that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the development company. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the government head – the conglomerate has faced accusations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Although the state government calls it a collaborative effort, the developer invested nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the project was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the top court.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to publicly resist the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving phone calls, explicit warnings and insinuations that opposing the development was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by people they allege are associated with the corporate group.

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