🔗 Share this article

For months, coercive phone calls persisted. Initially, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, and then from the authorities. In the end, a local artisan asserts he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

This third-generation resident is part of a group fighting a high-value project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," says the resident. "But the plan aims to destroy our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of this community present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the settlement. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently missing basic amenities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is permeated by the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and homes with proper sanitation is an optimistic future come true.

"We lack sufficient health services, proper streets or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," states A Selvin Nadar, 56, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, like Shaikh, are opposing the redevelopment.

None deny that this community, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is desperately requiring investment and development. But they are concerned that this plan – absent of resident participation – might convert premium city property into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.

This involved these marginalized, relocated individuals who established the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and commercial output, whose economic value is worth between $1m and $2m a year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly 1 million people living in the packed 220-hectare area, less than 50% will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is expected to take seven years to complete. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to divide a generations-old community. A portion will not get homes at all.

People eligible to continue living in Dharavi will be provided apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, communal way of living and working that has maintained Dharavi for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to ceramic crafts and waste processing are expected to decrease in quantity and be moved to an allocated "business area" distant from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For those such as the leather artisan, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to live in the slum, the redevelopment presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, three-floor workshop creates garments – formal jackets, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

Relatives dwells in the accommodations downstairs and employees and tailors – workers from north India – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Beyond the slum, accommodation prices are often significantly costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

At the government offices close by, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts a very different perspective. Well-groomed people mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying continental baguettes and pastries and having coffee on a patio outside a coffee shop and treat station. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This represents no progress for residents," states the artisan. "It's a huge land development that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

Furthermore, there's concern of the business conglomerate. Run by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the government head – the business group has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Although the state government calls it a joint project, the corporation invested $950m for its controlling interest. A case claiming that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the developer is being considered in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to actively protest the project, local opponents state they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – comprising communications, explicit warnings and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to opposing national interests – by individuals they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

Among those suspected of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c