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For months, coercive phone calls persisted. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from law enforcement directly. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was called to the local precinct and warned explicitly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

Shaikh is among those fighting a high-value initiative where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – is scheduled to be razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is exceptional in the globe," says Shaikh. "However they want to dismantle our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and elite residences that loom over the neighborhood. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

Among some individuals, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of premium apartments, neat parks, modern retail complexes and residences with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," states a chai seller, 56, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

However, some, such as this protester, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they worry that this plan – without community input – could potentially transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, displacing the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since generations ago.

It was these excluded, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and commercial output, whose production is estimated at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about a million residents living in the crowded 220-hectare neighborhood, less than 50% will be eligible for new homes in the development, which is projected to take a significant period to complete. The remainder will be transferred to barren areas and salt plains on the remote edges of the metropolis, potentially divide a historic social network. Certain individuals will be denied housing at all.

Those allowed to continue living in the neighborhood will be allocated apartments in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the organic, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from garment work to clay work and recycling are expected to shrink in number and be moved to a designated "commercial zone" separated from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to live in Dharavi, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His informal, three-floor workshop makes apparel – formal jackets, suede trenches, decorated jackets – distributed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Household members dwells in the accommodations downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from other states – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Outside the slum, housing costs are often 10 times as high for a single room.

Pressure and Coercion

At the official facilities nearby, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative illustrates a very different outlook. Well-groomed residents gather on cycles and e-vehicles, purchasing international baguettes and pastries and enlisting beverages on an outdoor area near a coffee shop and dessert parlor. It is a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This is not improvement for our community," says the artisan. "It represents a huge property transaction that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also distrust of the business conglomerate. Managed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has faced accusations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it disputes.

While the state government calls it a collaborative effort, the corporation invested a significant amount for its majority share. A case stating that the project was improperly granted to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been faced ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, direct threats and implications that opposing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people they assert work for the corporate group.

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