Intimidation, Fear and Aspiration as India's financial capital Residents Face Demolition

For months, threatening communications continued. Originally, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, and then from law enforcement directly. Finally, a local artisan asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and told clearly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

The leather artisan is part of a group fighting a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of Dharavi is exceptional in the globe," says Shaikh. "Yet their intention is to dismantle our community and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that loom over the settlement. Residences are assembled randomly and often lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries produce dangerous fumes and the air is saturated with the overpowering odor of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of luxury high-rises, neat parks, modern retail complexes and apartments with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, paved pathways or sewage systems and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," says A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, like Shaikh, are opposing the project.

All recognize that this community, long neglected as informal housing, is in stark need economic input and modernization. However they worry that this project – without resident participation – could potentially turn valuable urban land into an elite enclave, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

It was these shunned, displaced people who established the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose production is worth between a significant amount and $2m a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about a million residents living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, fewer than half will be eligible for new homes in the development, which is expected to take seven years to finish. Others will be moved to wastelands and coastal regions on the remote edges of the city, threatening to divide a historic social network. Some will receive no residences at all.

People eligible to stay in Dharavi will be provided apartments in tower blocks, a substantial change from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has sustained this area for many years.

Industries from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are projected to decrease in quantity and be relocated to an allocated "business area" separated from homes.

Existential Threat

For residents like Shaikh, a workshop owner and long-time inhabitant to live in this community, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-floor facility makes leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

His family resides in the rooms downstairs and employees and garment workers – migrants from other states – live there, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are often tenfold costlier for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the government offices in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting perspective. Well-groomed people gather on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying continental baked goods and croissants and socializing on an outdoor area outside a restaurant and treat station. It is a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not development for our community," says the protester. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Even as administrative bodies describes it as a collaborative effort, the corporation paid $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings alleging that the project was unfairly awarded to the developer is being considered in India's supreme court.

Continued Intimidation

From when they initiated to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – including communications, explicit warnings and suggestions that criticizing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they assert represent the corporate group.

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