🔗 Share this article

Across several weeks, coercive phone calls continued. Originally, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was called to law enforcement headquarters and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many fighting a expensive initiative where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be demolished and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is like nowhere else in the planet," states Shaikh. "However they want to destroy our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of Dharavi sit in stark contrast to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Homes are assembled randomly and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the air is permeated by the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

Among some individuals, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have sufficient health services, roads or water management and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, such as the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

None deny that Dharavi, historically ignored as informal housing, is desperately requiring economic input and modernization. However they worry that this project – absent of community input – might convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose production is valued at between a significant amount and a substantial sum a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately a million inhabitants living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be able for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take a significant period to accomplish. Others will be relocated to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, potentially fragment a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will be denied homes at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the area will be given units in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has supported Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are likely to shrink in number and be transferred to an allocated "business area" separated from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For residents like the leather artisan, a craftsman and long-time of his family to live in the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His rickety, multi-level operation produces leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – distributed in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the rooms below and laborers and sewers – workers from other states – live there, allowing him to sustain operations. Away from this community, housing costs are frequently significantly costlier for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the administrative buildings close by, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates a very different vision for the future. Slickly dressed people move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, acquiring western-style baguettes and breakfast items and having coffee on a terrace adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. It is a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that supports local residents.

"This represents no progress for us," states Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will price people out for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists concern of the development company. Headed by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities labels it a partnership, the developer contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit claiming that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to vocally oppose the redevelopment, local opponents assert they have been experienced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including communications, explicit warnings and insinuations that speaking against the development was equivalent to opposing national interests – by individuals they assert work for the business conglomerate.

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