🔗 Share this article

For months, intimidating communications recurred. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from law enforcement directly. Finally, a local artisan states he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a high-value initiative where this historic settlement – a massive informal community with rich history – will be bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The unique ecosystem of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," says Shaikh. "Yet their intention is to destroy our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and elite residences that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are constructed informally and frequently without proper sanitation, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the air is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future realized.

"We don't have sufficient health services, roads or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," says a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, such as this protester, are opposing the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. However they fear that this project – without resident participation – could potentially transform premium city property into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, working-class residents who have resided there since the late 1800s.

It was these marginalized, displaced people who developed the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and economic productivity, whose production is estimated at between $1m and two million dollars annually, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly 1 million inhabitants living in the packed sprawling neighborhood, less than 50% will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the project, which is projected to take seven years to accomplish. The remainder will be transferred to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to divide a generations-old neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be allocated flats in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has sustained Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from garment work to pottery and material recovery are likely to reduce in scale and be moved to a specific "business area" distant from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

In the case of this protester, a workshop owner and multi-generational resident to reside in the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level operation produces garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, fashionable garments – sold in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

His family dwells in the accommodations below and laborers and sewers – migrants from different regions – live there, enabling him to manage costs. Outside Dharavi's enclave, housing costs are typically tenfold as high for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the administrative buildings nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates an alternative perspective. Fashionable inhabitants move around on cycles and electric vehicles, buying continental bread and pastries and having coffee on an outdoor area adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. It is a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that supports local residents.

"This is not improvement for residents," states the artisan. "It represents a massive land development that will render it impossible for us to survive."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the government head – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Even as local authorities describes it as a partnership, the developer paid nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A case alleging that the project was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, protesters and community members claim they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including phone calls, direct threats and implications that speaking against the project was tantamount to speaking against the country – by people they allege represent the corporate group.

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