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Over an extended period, threatening communications continued. Initially, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, later from the police themselves. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was ordered to law enforcement headquarters and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is part of a group fighting a expensive project where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is exceptional in the world," explains Shaikh. "Yet they want to eradicate our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of the slum present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and elite residences that overshadow the settlement. Residences are assembled randomly and typically without proper sanitation, unregulated industries produce dangerous fumes and the air is filled with the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and homes with two toilets is an optimistic future come true.

"There's no sufficient health services, roads or sewage systems and there are no spaces for youth to recreate," states a chai seller, 56, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The single option is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, including this protester, are resisting the plan.

None deny that the slum, historically ignored as informal housing, is in stark need economic input and modernization. Yet they are concerned that this plan – lacking resident participation – could potentially convert valuable urban land into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these shunned, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is valued at between $1m and $2m annually, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about one million residents living in the dense 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be eligible for new homes in the development, which is estimated to take seven years to accomplish. Additional residents will be transferred to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, threatening to break up a historic social network. Certain individuals will be denied housing at all.

Residents permitted to stay in Dharavi will be allocated apartments in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of living and working that has sustained Dharavi for so long.

Industries from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are projected to shrink in number and be relocated to an allocated "business area" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time inhabitant to live in Dharavi, the redevelopment presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, multi-level operation creates apparel – sharp blazers, suede trenches, fashionable garments – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives lives in the accommodations underneath and employees and tailors – migrants from other states – also sleep in the same building, permitting him to afford their labour. Outside this community, housing costs are often tenfold more expensive for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the government offices nearby, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows a contrasting outlook. Slickly dressed inhabitants mill about on bicycles and e-vehicles, purchasing western-style baked goods and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that supports the neighborhood.

"This represents no progress for our community," explains the protester. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will price people out for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the development company. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Although administrative bodies calls it a collaborative effort, the corporation paid a significant amount for its majority share. A case claiming that the initiative was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – comprising messages, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the initiative was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they assert work for the business conglomerate.

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