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For months, intimidating messages recurred. Originally, allegedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, subsequently from the authorities. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was ordered to the police station and warned explicitly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is among those fighting a expensive project where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces bulldozed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of this area is like nowhere else in the world," states the resident. "Yet they want to dismantle our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The cramped lanes of this community present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the neighborhood. Residences are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is filled with the overpowering odor of open sewers.

Among some individuals, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and homes with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future come true.

"There's no proper healthcare, paved pathways or drainage and there are no spaces for children to play," explains a tea vendor, fifty-six, who relocated from his home state in 1982. "The single option is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

However, some, including this protester, are resisting the plan.

None deny that this community, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need financial support and improvement. Yet they worry that this plan – absent of public consultation – might convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have lived there since generations ago.

This involved these excluded, displaced people who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and business activity, whose production is worth between a significant amount and two million dollars a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately one million residents living in the crowded 220-hectare area, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the project, which is estimated to take a significant period to accomplish. Others will be relocated to undeveloped zones and saline fields on the remote edges of the city, potentially divide a long-established community. Certain individuals will receive no homes at all.

People eligible to remain in the area will be allocated units in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the natural, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has supported the community for so long.

Industries from garment work to clay work and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be moved to a specific "commercial zone" far from people's residences.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as the leather artisan, a leather artisan and long-time inhabitant to reside in this community, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-floor workshop produces leather coats – formal jackets, luxury coats, decorated jackets – distributed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Relatives lives in the spaces downstairs and laborers and tailors – laborers from other states – also sleep there, permitting him to afford their labour. Away from Dharavi's enclave, Mumbai rents are often significantly more expensive for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the administrative buildings in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows a very different vision for the future. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on cycles and e-vehicles, buying continental bread and pastries and socializing on a patio outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This is not progress for our community," says the protester. "It represents an enormous real estate deal that will price people out for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the business conglomerate. Headed by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and a close ally of the government head – the conglomerate has faced accusations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it denies.

While local authorities calls it a joint project, the business group contributed nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A lawsuit stating that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the developer is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to vocally oppose the redevelopment, local opponents state they have been faced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving communications, clear intimidation and insinuations that speaking against the project was equivalent to opposing national interests – by people they allege work for the developer.

Among those suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c