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Across several weeks, coercive messages continued. At first, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, later from law enforcement directly. In the end, one resident claims he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many opposing a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The culture of this area is unparalleled in the globe," explains the resident. "However their intention is to dismantle our community and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that loom over the neighborhood. Homes are built haphazardly and often without proper sanitation, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the air is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

Among some individuals, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and homes with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream realized.

"We don't have proper healthcare, proper streets or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," states A Selvin Nadar, 56, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The single option is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, such as Shaikh, are fighting against the project.

All recognize that Dharavi, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. However they fear that this initiative – absent of public consultation – is one that will transform valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, forcing out the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, displaced people who built up the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and business activity, whose output is worth between $1m and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately one million inhabitants living in the packed 2.2 square kilometer zone, a minority will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is estimated to take seven years to accomplish. Additional residents will be moved to undeveloped zones and saline fields on the far outskirts of Mumbai, threatening to divide a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no residences at all.

People eligible to stay in the area will be given apartments in multi-story structures, a major break from the organic, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has sustained Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to ceramic crafts and waste processing are likely to decrease in quantity and be relocated to a designated "business area" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time of his family to call home this community, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-storey workshop makes leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – sold in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members resides in the accommodations downstairs and his workers and sewers – migrants from north India – reside in the same building, allowing him to manage costs. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are frequently significantly costlier for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the government offices close by, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates a very different vision for the future. Fashionable people move around on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international baguettes and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a terrace adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that maintains local residents.

"This isn't progress for us," explains Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the development company. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the government head – the business group has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it denies.

While administrative bodies calls it a joint project, the corporation contributed nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A case claiming that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the business group is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, protesters and community members assert they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, direct threats and suggestions that opposing the project was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people they claim are associated with the corporate group.

Among those suspected of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c