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For months, threatening messages recurred. At first, allegedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, and then from law enforcement directly. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

Shaikh is one of many opposing a high-value redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be demolished and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The culture of this area is unparalleled in the planet," says the protester. "Yet they want to eradicate our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The dank gullies of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the neighborhood. Dwellings are constructed informally and frequently missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the air is permeated by the overpowering odor of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and residences with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future come true.

"There's no proper healthcare, proper streets or water management and there's nowhere for children to play," says a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The single option is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Resident Opposition

But others, such as this protester, are resisting the plan.

None deny that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is in stark need economic input and modernization. But they worry that this initiative – lacking public consultation – is one that will convert valuable urban land into a luxury development, evicting the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have been there since generations ago.

These were these shunned, migrant workers who established the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose production is estimated at between one million dollars and two million dollars a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately one million inhabitants living in the packed 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be eligible for replacement housing in the project, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to break up a generations-old neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no homes at all.

Those allowed to stay in the neighborhood will be allocated apartments in high-rise buildings, a major break from the organic, collective approach of residing and operating that has maintained Dharavi for many years.

Industries from tailoring to pottery and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be relocated to an allocated "business area" separated from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a workshop owner and third generation inhabitant to live in the slum, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey operation creates garments – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – marketed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

His family resides in the spaces below and laborers and tailors – laborers from different regions – also sleep in the same building, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside the slum, housing costs are often 10 times as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

In the government offices in the vicinity, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed residents move around on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring western-style bread and croissants and enlisting beverages on a patio near Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This represents a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that sustains the neighborhood.

"This is not improvement for residents," says the artisan. "It's a massive land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the corporate group. Headed by a powerful tycoon – a leading figure and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has faced accusations of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Even as administrative bodies describes it as a collaborative effort, the business group contributed nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. Legal proceedings alleging that the project was questionably assigned to the developer is pending in the top court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to actively protest the development, local opponents assert they have been faced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving messages, clear intimidation and suggestions that speaking against the project was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they allege work for the corporate group.

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