🔗 Share this article

For months, intimidating communications persisted. Initially, supposedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, and then from the police themselves. In the end, one resident asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and told clearly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

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

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," explains the resident. "Yet they want to dismantle our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the neighborhood. Homes are built haphazardly and frequently lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the atmosphere is saturated with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

To some, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of premium apartments, neat parks, modern retail complexes and residences with two toilets is an optimistic future come true.

"There's no proper healthcare, proper streets or sewage systems and there are no spaces for children to play," explains A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, like the leather artisan, are opposing the redevelopment.

All recognize that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. Yet they worry that this plan – without community input – is one that will convert valuable urban land into a luxury development, forcing out the marginalized, migrant communities who have been there since generations ago.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who established the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and commercial output, whose production is worth between one million dollars and a substantial sum annually, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about a million people living in the packed sprawling area, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be moved to undeveloped zones and saline fields on the far outskirts of the metropolis, risking fragment a long-established community. A portion will receive no homes at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be allocated flats in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the organic, communal way of residing and operating that has maintained Dharavi for so long.

Businesses from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are likely to reduce in scale and be relocated to a specific "industrial sector" far from homes.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time resident to call home Dharavi, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey operation produces apparel – formal jackets, suede trenches, decorated jackets – distributed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

Relatives resides in the spaces below and his workers and tailors – laborers from different regions – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are often tenfold as high for minimal space.

Threats and Warning

In the administrative buildings close by, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows a very different outlook. Fashionable residents move around on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, buying international baguettes and breakfast items and socializing on an outdoor area near a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains local residents.

"This isn't development for our community," says the artisan. "It represents a huge property transaction that will render it impossible for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the corporate group. Run by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the national leader – the corporation has faced accusations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

While administrative bodies labels it a partnership, the business group invested nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A lawsuit alleging that the initiative was questionably assigned to the corporation is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to actively protest the redevelopment, local opponents claim they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – comprising phone calls, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by individuals they assert represent the corporate group.

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