Threats, Anxiety and Hope as Mumbai Slum Dwellers Await the Bulldozers

Over an extended period, intimidating phone calls continued. Initially, reportedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Finally, a local artisan states he was ordered to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many fighting a multimillion-dollar project where this historic settlement – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be bulldozed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The culture of this area is like nowhere else in the world," says Shaikh. "Yet they want to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of Dharavi sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and elite residences that dominate the settlement. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently missing basic amenities, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the atmosphere is filled with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of premium apartments, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and homes with two toilets is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We don't have sufficient health services, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," says a chai seller, 56, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, including this protester, are opposing the plan.

None deny that this community, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. Yet they are concerned that this initiative – absent of public consultation – is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have resided there since the late 1800s.

These were these marginalized, migrant workers who built up the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose output is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the packed 220-hectare zone, fewer than half will be eligible for new homes in the redevelopment, which is projected to take a significant period to accomplish. Additional residents will be transferred to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the metropolis, risking fragment a historic social network. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the neighborhood will be given apartments in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of living and working that has maintained this area for so long.

Commercial activities from tailoring to ceramic crafts and waste processing are projected to reduce in scale and be relocated to an allocated "commercial zone" far from homes.

Existential Threat

In the case of Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time of his family to reside in this community, the project presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey operation creates leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, decorated jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

His family lives in the accommodations underneath and employees and tailors – laborers from other states – reside in the same building, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside this community, accommodation prices are typically tenfold costlier for minimal space.

Harassment and Intimidation

At the administrative buildings close by, a visual representation of the Dharavi project depicts a contrasting vision for the future. Slickly dressed residents gather on cycles and eco-friendly transport, purchasing western-style baked goods and breakfast items and having coffee on a patio outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. This depicts a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This represents no improvement for residents," states the artisan. "It's a massive real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Furthermore, there's concern of the development company. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the government head – the corporation has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

While local authorities describes it as a collaborative effort, the developer contributed nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A case claiming that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the business group is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, local opponents assert they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – involving communications, explicit warnings and suggestions that criticizing the development was equivalent to anti-national sentiment – by people they claim represent the developer.

Included in these suspected of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c