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For months, threatening communications recurred. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan claims he was called to the local precinct and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is one of many resisting a high-value project where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is exceptional in the planet," says the protester. "But their intention is to dismantle our community and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the neighborhood. Homes are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We lack proper healthcare, paved pathways or drainage and we have no places for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, 56, who migrated from his home state in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, such as this protester, are fighting against the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. But they are concerned that this plan – absent of resident participation – is one that will convert premium city property into a luxury development, forcing out the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these shunned, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of community resilience and economic productivity, whose production is valued at between $1m and $2m per year, making it a major unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Out of about 1 million people living in the dense sprawling neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for new homes in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to complete. Others will be transferred to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the distant periphery of the metropolis, threatening to fragment a historic community. Certain individuals will receive no residences at all.

Those allowed to continue living in Dharavi will be allocated flats in tower blocks, a substantial change from the evolved, collective approach of residing and operating that has maintained this area for so long.

Industries from clothing production to pottery and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be relocated to a designated "business area" separated from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of this protester, a craftsman and third generation inhabitant to live in the slum, the plan presents a survival challenge. His rickety, three-floor operation makes leather coats – formal jackets, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Household members resides in the spaces downstairs and employees and garment workers – workers from different regions – also sleep there, permitting him to manage costs. Away from this community, housing costs are often 10 times more expensive for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the official facilities nearby, a visual representation of the Dharavi project illustrates an alternative outlook. Fashionable people move around on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying international baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a terrace adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains the neighborhood.

"This isn't development for residents," states Shaikh. "It's a huge land development that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists distrust of the corporate group. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

Although the state government calls it a partnership, the developer invested a significant amount for its controlling interest. A case stating that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the developer is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – involving phone calls, clear intimidation and insinuations that speaking against the project was equivalent to opposing national interests – by people they assert are associated with the corporate group.

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