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Over an extended period, coercive communications continued. Initially, allegedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, and then from the police themselves. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was called to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is part of a group resisting a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be demolished and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," explains the protester. "However they want to dismantle our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that dominate the settlement. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the air is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and homes with two toilets is an optimistic future realized.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or water management and we have no places for kids to enjoy," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The only way is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

However, some, like the leather artisan, are resisting the plan.

None deny that Dharavi, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they are concerned that this project – lacking resident participation – might convert premium city property into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

These were these excluded, migrant workers who established the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and business activity, whose production is worth between a significant amount and a substantial sum annually, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about one million people living in the dense 220-hectare neighborhood, less than 50% will be eligible for replacement housing in the development, which is estimated to take a significant period to accomplish. The remainder will be moved to barren areas and coastal regions on the remote edges of Mumbai, potentially fragment a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will not get homes at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be allocated flats in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the natural, communal way of residing and operating that has supported this area for generations.

Businesses from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are likely to decrease in quantity and be moved to a specific "business area" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to reside in this community, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, multi-level workshop creates garments – formal jackets, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in south Mumbai and overseas.

Household members lives in the rooms downstairs and laborers and tailors – migrants from north India – live in the same building, enabling him to afford their labour. Beyond the slum, Mumbai rents are typically significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the administrative buildings in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed people mill about on bicycles and e-vehicles, purchasing international baked goods and breakfast items and having coffee on a terrace outside Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not development for residents," explains Shaikh. "It represents an enormous real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the corporate group. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has faced accusations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

Even as administrative bodies describes it as a joint project, the corporation invested $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit alleging that the project was improperly granted to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the project, local opponents claim they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – comprising messages, explicit warnings and insinuations that opposing the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

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