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Over an extended period, threatening phone calls continued. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims he was summoned to the local precinct and warned explicitly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many fighting a high-value redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces demolished and modernized by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is exceptional in the planet," states Shaikh. "However their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the area. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and homes with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, roads or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," states a chai seller, fifty-six, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The single option is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, such as the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, long neglected as informal housing, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. But they worry that this plan – absent of resident participation – could potentially transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, forcing out the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these excluded, displaced people who built up the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is worth between $1m and two million dollars per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer zone, a minority will be qualified for new homes in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take a significant period to finish. Additional residents will be moved to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to break up a historic community. A portion will receive no homes at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be provided units in tower blocks, a substantial change from the natural, communal way of residing and operating that has sustained Dharavi for so long.

Industries from tailoring to ceramic crafts and recycling are projected to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a specific "business area" far from homes.

Livelihood Crisis

For residents like this protester, a craftsman and third generation resident to call home the slum, the project presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey operation makes leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in high-end shops in south Mumbai and internationally.

His family dwells in the rooms below and employees and tailors – workers from different regions – reside on-site, allowing him to afford their labour. Outside Dharavi's enclave, Mumbai rents are often tenfold costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the official facilities close by, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan shows an alternative outlook. Fashionable inhabitants move around on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, buying western-style bread and croissants and having coffee on a patio adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains local residents.

"This is not improvement for residents," says the artisan. "It represents an enormous property transaction that will price people out for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the development company. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has encountered allegations of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Although administrative bodies describes it as a partnership, the developer paid nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A case stating that the initiative was improperly granted to the business group is under review in India's supreme court.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to vocally oppose the development, local opponents state they have been subjected to an extended period of pressure and threats – including phone calls, explicit warnings and insinuations that opposing the initiative was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by individuals they allege represent the developer.

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