🔗 Share this article

Over an extended period, threatening messages persisted. Originally, reportedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Ultimately, one resident states he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is among those resisting a multimillion-dollar initiative where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of the slum is unparalleled in the globe," explains Shaikh. "Yet their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the area. Residences are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

Among some individuals, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of luxury high-rises, neat parks, modern retail complexes and homes with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision come true.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or sewage systems and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," states A Selvin Nadar, 56, who moved from southern India in that period. "The single option is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Local Protest

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

None deny that this community, long neglected as informal housing, is desperately requiring investment and development. However they worry that this project – without public consultation – might convert premium city property into a playground for the rich, evicting the lower-caste, working-class residents who have lived there since generations ago.

This involved these marginalized, displaced people who developed the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose economic value is estimated at between $1m and a substantial sum a year, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly 1 million inhabitants living in the crowded sprawling area, fewer than half will be qualified for new homes in the project, which is estimated to take a significant period to finish. The remainder will be relocated to wastelands and coastal regions on the remote edges of the city, threatening to break up a generations-old social network. Some will be denied housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from tailoring to pottery and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to a specific "industrial sector" distant from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as the leather artisan, a leather artisan and multi-generational resident to reside in this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-storey facility makes leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, decorated jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family resides in the accommodations downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from different regions – live in the same building, permitting him to manage costs. Away from this community, accommodation prices are often significantly costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

Within the administrative buildings close by, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan depicts an alternative outlook. Slickly dressed people move around on cycles and electric vehicles, acquiring western-style bread and croissants and socializing on a patio adjacent to a coffee shop and treat station. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that maintains the neighborhood.

"This is not progress for our community," says the protester. "It represents an enormous real estate deal that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the corporate group. Run by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and a close ally of the national leader – the business group has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it denies.

While local authorities labels it a joint project, the corporation contributed a significant amount for its majority share. Legal proceedings alleging that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to publicly resist the redevelopment, local opponents claim they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving communications, direct threats and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they assert work for the business conglomerate.

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