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Across several weeks, threatening communications continued. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, later from the police themselves. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was called to the police station and warned explicitly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is one of many opposing a high-value project where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – is scheduled to be bulldozed and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The culture of Dharavi is unparalleled in the planet," explains Shaikh. "Yet the plan aims to dismantle our community and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and elite residences that overshadow the neighborhood. Residences are built haphazardly and frequently missing basic amenities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the air is saturated with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a glistening neighborhood of luxury high-rises, neat parks, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream achieved.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, roads or drainage and we have no places for youth to recreate," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who moved from his home state in 1982. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

However, some, like Shaikh, are resisting the redevelopment.

None deny that the slum, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. Yet they fear that this project – without resident participation – is one that will transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the marginalized, migrant communities who have lived there since generations ago.

These were these shunned, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and economic productivity, whose production is worth between $1m and two million dollars per year, making it a major unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly a million people living in the dense 220-hectare neighborhood, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the project, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. The remainder will be transferred to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the remote edges of the city, risking break up a generations-old neighborhood. Some will receive no housing at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the area will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has sustained this area for many years.

Businesses from clothing production to clay work and material recovery are likely to shrink in number and be transferred to a specific "industrial sector" distant from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as this protester, a craftsman and multi-generational inhabitant to call home the slum, the redevelopment presents a survival challenge. His informal, multi-level facility makes garments – sharp blazers, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

His family lives in the accommodations underneath and his workers and tailors – workers from other states – live in the same building, allowing him to afford their labour. Beyond the slum, housing costs are often tenfold costlier for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

Within the administrative buildings close by, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan depicts a very different outlook. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on cycles and e-vehicles, purchasing international bread and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. This depicts a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that sustains local residents.

"This is not improvement for our community," says the artisan. "It's a huge land development that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the business conglomerate. Headed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as the state government calls it a partnership, the corporation contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A case stating that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the business group is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to actively protest the project, protesters and community members state they have been faced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – involving phone calls, explicit warnings and suggestions that speaking against the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by individuals they assert represent the developer.

Among those accused of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c