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For months, intimidating phone calls continued. At first, reportedly from a retired cop and an ex-military commander, and then from the authorities. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is among those opposing a expensive redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be demolished and transformed by a corporate giant.

"The unique ecosystem of Dharavi is exceptional in the planet," explains the protester. "But they want to dismantle our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of the slum present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and elite residences that dominate the area. Residences are constructed informally and frequently without proper sanitation, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the unpleasant stench of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of high-end towers, neat parks, modern retail complexes and homes with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream achieved.

"We lack proper healthcare, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," explains a chai seller, 56, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, like this protester, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. But they are concerned that this project – without public consultation – could potentially turn premium city property into a luxury development, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these marginalized, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and commercial output, whose output is estimated at between $1m and $2m a year, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about 1 million residents living in the crowded sprawling neighborhood, less than 50% will be qualified for new homes in the redevelopment, which is projected to take seven years to finish. The remainder will be transferred to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the remote edges of the metropolis, threatening to break up a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to continue living in Dharavi will be provided apartments in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has supported Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from garment work to clay work and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" separated from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For residents like Shaikh, a craftsman and third generation of his family to live in Dharavi, the plan presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey facility produces garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – distributed in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Relatives resides in the spaces underneath and employees and garment workers – workers from other states – live in the same building, allowing him to manage costs. Away from Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are frequently significantly more expensive for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the official facilities nearby, a visual representation of the Dharavi project depicts a very different vision for the future. Fashionable residents move around on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring continental baked goods and croissants and socializing on a terrace adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and treat station. This depicts a stark contrast from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't improvement for us," states the protester. "It's an enormous real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the corporate group. Managed by a powerful tycoon – a leading figure and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities describes it as a collaborative effort, the business group invested nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings alleging that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is being considered in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been faced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – involving communications, explicit warnings and implications that criticizing the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by figures they claim represent the business conglomerate.

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