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For months, intimidating phone calls continued. At first, reportedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, later from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan claims he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those fighting a expensive redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is unparalleled in the planet," states the protester. "However the plan aims to dismantle our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that dominate the neighborhood. Homes are assembled randomly and often without proper sanitation, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is saturated with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision achieved.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, proper streets or water management and there are no spaces for children to play," says a chai seller, in his fifties, who moved from his home state in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

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

None deny that the slum, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this initiative – absent of community input – could potentially turn premium city property into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have lived there since the late 1800s.

These were these excluded, migrant workers who built up the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and economic productivity, whose production is estimated at between $1m and $2m annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Resettlement Issues

Of the roughly a million inhabitants living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be able for alternative accommodation in the project, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to finish. Others will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the distant periphery of the metropolis, potentially fragment a generations-old social network. Some will be denied housing at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be given apartments in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the natural, communal way of living and working that has maintained Dharavi for so long.

Businesses from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are likely to reduce in scale and be relocated to a designated "industrial sector" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and long-time resident to reside in Dharavi, the project presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-storey operation creates garments – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Household members lives in the accommodations below and laborers and tailors – laborers from other states – live in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Outside Dharavi's enclave, Mumbai rents are often tenfold costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

In the official facilities nearby, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative illustrates a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed people mill about on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, buying western-style bread and breakfast items and socializing on an outdoor area near a restaurant and treat station. It is a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that maintains the neighborhood.

"This represents no development for residents," states Shaikh. "It's a huge real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the national leader – the business group has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

While administrative bodies describes it as a collaborative effort, the developer paid nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings claiming that the initiative was questionably assigned to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, local opponents claim they have been experienced an extended period of coercion and warning – including messages, explicit warnings and insinuations that speaking against the initiative was equivalent to opposing national interests – by figures they assert work for the corporate group.

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