Pressure, Apprehension and Hope as Mumbai Slum Dwellers Await the Bulldozers

Across several weeks, intimidating messages continued. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from the police themselves. Ultimately, a local artisan claims he was summoned to the local precinct and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those fighting a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces demolished and transformed by a large business group.

"The culture of Dharavi is unparalleled in the planet," says the resident. "However they want to eradicate our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Homes are built haphazardly and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, modern retail complexes and apartments with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, proper streets or water management and there's nowhere for children to play," says a chai seller, fifty-six, who moved from southern India in that period. "The single option is to clear the area and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

Yet certain residents, like Shaikh, are resisting the project.

None deny that this community, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need investment and development. Yet they fear that this plan – absent of public consultation – might turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, forcing out the marginalized, working-class residents who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who developed the uninhabited area into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and commercial output, whose output is valued at between $1m and two million dollars per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately a million inhabitants living in the crowded sprawling area, a minority will be qualified for replacement housing in the development, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Others will be moved to wastelands and coastal regions on the distant periphery of the metropolis, potentially fragment a historic social network. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the area will be provided flats in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the organic, collective approach of living and working that has maintained the community for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to ceramic crafts and waste processing are expected to shrink in number and be moved to an allocated "industrial sector" distant from people's residences.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as this protester, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to call home this community, the redevelopment presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey workshop makes leather coats – sharp blazers, suede trenches, fashionable garments – sold in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Relatives lives in the spaces downstairs and laborers and garment workers – workers from north India – reside in the same building, permitting him to manage costs. Outside Dharavi's enclave, housing costs are frequently 10 times costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the official facilities nearby, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan depicts an alternative vision for the future. Fashionable people move around on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental bread and pastries and having coffee on a patio outside a restaurant and treat station. This represents a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that sustains the neighborhood.

"This represents no improvement for us," states the artisan. "It's a huge land development that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Headed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Although local authorities calls it a collaborative effort, the corporation contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit alleging that the project was unfairly awarded to the developer is pending in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to vocally oppose the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – comprising communications, clear intimidation and insinuations that opposing the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by people they assert represent the corporate group.

Part of the group accused of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c