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For months, coercive messages recurred. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, and then from the authorities. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was ordered to the police station and told clearly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

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

"The culture of Dharavi is unparalleled in the globe," explains the resident. "Yet they want to eradicate our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are built haphazardly and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations produce dangerous fumes and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

Among some individuals, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, neat parks, contemporary malls and homes with proper sanitation is an optimistic future come true.

"We lack proper healthcare, proper streets or water management and we have no places for children to play," states A Selvin Nadar, in his fifties, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

But others, including the leather artisan, are resisting the project.

All recognize that the slum, historically ignored as informal housing, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. But they fear that this project – absent of community input – might convert valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, displacing the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have lived there since the late 1800s.

These were these shunned, migrant workers who developed the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and commercial output, whose economic value is estimated at between a significant amount and $2m annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly 1 million residents living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, fewer than half will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is expected to take a significant period to complete. The remainder will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the metropolis, threatening to divide a long-established community. A portion will be denied housing at all.

People eligible to continue living in Dharavi will be provided flats in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has sustained Dharavi for generations.

Businesses from tailoring to ceramic crafts and recycling are expected to shrink in number and be relocated to a specific "business area" distant from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like the leather artisan, a workshop owner and multi-generational resident to live in this community, the project presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-storey operation makes leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

His family resides in the accommodations downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from different regions – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Away from this community, housing costs are typically 10 times costlier for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the administrative buildings nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the redevelopment plan shows a contrasting outlook. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, buying continental bread and pastries and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and treat station. This depicts a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't improvement for our community," states Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the development company. Run by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it denies.

Even as local authorities describes it as a joint project, the corporation invested a significant amount for its 80% stake. A lawsuit stating that the project was unfairly awarded to the corporation is under review in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to actively protest the redevelopment, local opponents state they have been subjected to an extended period of harassment and intimidation – comprising communications, explicit warnings and insinuations that speaking against the initiative was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by people they claim work for the corporate group.

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