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For months, intimidating phone calls recurred. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, and then from law enforcement directly. Ultimately, a local artisan states he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is part of a group opposing a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be razed and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is like nowhere else in the planet," says the protester. "However the plan aims to dismantle our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of the slum present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Homes are constructed informally and often missing basic amenities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the environment is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," says A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

But others, including this protester, are resisting the redevelopment.

All recognize that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing investment and development. However they fear that this plan – lacking community input – is one that will transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, displacing the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these marginalized, migrant workers who developed the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is estimated at between a significant amount and a substantial sum per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately 1 million inhabitants living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, a minority will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, potentially fragment a generations-old community. A portion will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the neighborhood will be provided units in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the evolved, collective approach of residing and operating that has supported this area for generations.

Industries from clothing production to clay work and material recovery are projected to reduce in scale and be relocated to an allocated "industrial sector" distant from people's residences.

Existential Threat

In the case of Shaikh, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to call home this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level facility makes apparel – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – distributed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

His family dwells in the spaces underneath and his workers and tailors – laborers from other states – also sleep on-site, permitting him to afford their labour. Beyond this community, accommodation prices are frequently 10 times more expensive for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the government offices in the vicinity, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows an alternative vision for the future. Fashionable residents mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying western-style baguettes and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a patio adjacent to a restaurant and treat station. This depicts a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that sustains local residents.

"This is not improvement for residents," says the artisan. "It's a huge property transaction that will render it impossible for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the business conglomerate. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as the state government describes it as a joint project, the business group invested $950m for its majority share. Legal proceedings claiming that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the business group is being considered in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, Shaikh and other residents state they have been faced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including communications, direct threats and implications that opposing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by figures they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

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