🔗 Share this article

For months, coercive phone calls recurred. Originally, supposedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those resisting a expensive project where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces razed and transformed by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," explains Shaikh. "But they want to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that dominate the settlement. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of premium apartments, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack proper healthcare, paved pathways or water management and there are no spaces for youth to recreate," states a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The only way is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

Yet certain residents, including Shaikh, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, long neglected as informal housing, is in stark need investment and development. However they are concerned that this plan – absent of community input – is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have been there since the nineteenth century.

It was these shunned, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose production is worth between a significant amount and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the packed sprawling area, fewer than half will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is expected to take seven years to complete. Additional residents will be moved to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the distant periphery of the metropolis, potentially break up a long-established neighborhood. Certain individuals will be denied homes at all.

Those allowed to stay in the neighborhood will be provided apartments in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of living and working that has supported this area for so long.

Industries from tailoring to clay work and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be transferred to a specific "business area" separated from homes.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as Shaikh, a workshop owner and long-time inhabitant to reside in the slum, the project presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-storey facility produces apparel – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Household members resides in the accommodations underneath and employees and garment workers – laborers from different regions – also sleep on-site, enabling him to afford their labour. Beyond the slum, Mumbai rents are frequently significantly costlier for minimal space.

Threats and Warning

Within the administrative buildings in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative depicts a very different vision for the future. Slickly dressed people move around on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying continental baked goods and breakfast items and socializing on an outdoor area adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. It is a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that supports local residents.

"This is not improvement for us," states Shaikh. "It's an enormous land development that will render it impossible for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the development company. Run by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the government head – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Although local authorities calls it a collaborative effort, the developer paid nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings alleging that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the corporation is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to vocally oppose the redevelopment, protesters and community members assert they have been experienced ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – comprising communications, explicit warnings and suggestions that opposing the initiative was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they allege are associated with the business conglomerate.

Among those alleged to have delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c