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Over an extended period, threatening phone calls continued. At first, supposedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those opposing a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is unparalleled in the globe," says the resident. "But their intention is to eradicate our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and elite residences that loom over the settlement. Residences are constructed informally and often lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, paved pathways or sewage systems and there's nowhere for children to play," says a chai seller, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

However, some, such as this protester, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. Yet they worry that this plan – without public consultation – might transform valuable urban land into an elite enclave, evicting the lower-caste, working-class residents who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

It was these excluded, migrant workers who built up the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and commercial output, whose production is worth between a significant amount and two million dollars a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Out of about one million people living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, fewer than half will be able for alternative accommodation in the project, which is estimated to take seven years to finish. The remainder will be relocated to barren areas and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, threatening to divide a long-established community. Some will not get residences at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the area will be provided apartments in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has maintained the community for so long.

Businesses from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to an allocated "commercial zone" separated from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to call home Dharavi, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-floor operation creates apparel – tailored coats, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

His family resides in the accommodations underneath and his workers and sewers – migrants from north India – also sleep on-site, enabling him to afford their labour. Outside this community, accommodation prices are typically 10 times as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the official facilities close by, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan depicts a contrasting perspective. Fashionable people gather on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, purchasing western-style baked goods and pastries and having coffee on a patio outside Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains local residents.

"This is not improvement for us," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a huge land development that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by a powerful tycoon – a leading figure and an associate of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

While administrative bodies labels it a collaborative effort, the corporation contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A case alleging that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the corporation is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to vocally oppose the redevelopment, protesters and community members state they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – involving communications, direct threats and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was equivalent to speaking against the country – by individuals they claim are associated with the developer.

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