Pressure, Apprehension and Optimism as India's financial capital Slum Dwellers Await Demolition

Over an extended period, coercive communications persisted. Initially, reportedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, one resident states he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is among those resisting a high-value project where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be bulldozed and modernized by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of Dharavi is unparalleled in the world," states Shaikh. "However their intention is to eradicate our way of life and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The narrow alleys of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Homes are assembled randomly and often missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and homes with two toilets is an optimistic future achieved.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who migrated from southern India in that period. "The only way is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

However, some, including Shaikh, are resisting the project.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. Yet they worry that this plan – lacking public consultation – might convert valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, evicting the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, relocated individuals who developed the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and commercial output, whose output is estimated at between $1m and $2m annually, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly a million people living in the dense sprawling neighborhood, a minority will be able for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take a significant period to complete. Others will be moved to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the distant periphery of Mumbai, threatening to divide a historic social network. A portion will not get homes at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be given units in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the evolved, collective approach of living and working that has sustained the community for many years.

Businesses from garment work to pottery and recycling are likely to decrease in quantity and be transferred to a designated "business area" separated from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to reside in the slum, the project presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-floor workshop makes apparel – formal jackets, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

His family dwells in the accommodations underneath and employees and sewers – workers from different regions – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are often 10 times more expensive for a single room.

Threats and Warning

Within the administrative buildings close by, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts an alternative perspective. Slickly dressed residents move around on cycles and e-vehicles, buying continental bread and breakfast items and having coffee on an outdoor area near Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. This depicts a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that sustains the neighborhood.

"This is not progress for residents," says Shaikh. "It's an enormous real estate deal that will render it impossible for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the corporate group. Headed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the business group has encountered allegations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it disputes.

While administrative bodies calls it a partnership, the corporation paid $950m for its majority share. A case claiming that the project was improperly granted to the business group is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the development, protesters and community members state they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – involving phone calls, direct threats and implications that opposing the development was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by figures they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

Part of the group accused of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c