🔗 Share this article

For months, threatening communications recurred. At first, allegedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves. In the end, a local artisan states he was ordered to the police station and warned explicitly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those opposing a expensive project where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is exceptional in the globe," explains the protester. "Yet they want to destroy our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that dominate the neighborhood. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

Among some individuals, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and apartments with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream come true.

"There's no sufficient health services, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," states A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who moved from southern India in 1982. "The only way is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Resident Opposition

However, some, including Shaikh, are fighting against the project.

None deny that Dharavi, long neglected as informal housing, is desperately requiring investment and development. However they fear that this plan – without community input – could potentially convert valuable urban land into an elite enclave, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these marginalized, migrant workers who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and commercial output, whose economic value is valued at between a significant amount and $2m annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly a million inhabitants living in the crowded sprawling zone, a minority will be qualified for new homes in the project, which is estimated to take seven years to finish. The remainder will be relocated to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the remote edges of Mumbai, risking divide a historic community. A portion will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of residing and operating that has supported Dharavi for generations.

Commercial activities from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to a specific "commercial zone" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a workshop owner and multi-generational resident to reside in the slum, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey operation creates garments – formal jackets, luxury coats, fashionable garments – marketed in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

Relatives lives in the accommodations underneath and his workers and tailors – migrants from different regions – also sleep in the same building, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside Dharavi's enclave, Mumbai rents are frequently 10 times costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

At the government offices nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan illustrates a contrasting perspective. Slickly dressed inhabitants move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, buying international bread and pastries and having coffee on an outdoor area outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that sustains the neighborhood.

"This isn't progress for our community," says Shaikh. "It's an enormous land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

There is also distrust of the development company. Headed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Although local authorities calls it a joint project, the business group contributed a significant amount for its majority share. A lawsuit stating that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – involving communications, direct threats and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by individuals they claim are associated with the business conglomerate.

Part of the group accused of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c