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For months, intimidating messages persisted. At first, supposedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, subsequently from the authorities. Finally, one resident asserts he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and instructed bluntly: remain silent or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is among those fighting a high-value project where this historic settlement – a massive informal community with rich history – is scheduled to be razed and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is exceptional in the planet," explains Shaikh. "However their intention is to destroy our community and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and elite residences that loom over the neighborhood. Dwellings are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the environment is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of premium apartments, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"We don't have sufficient health services, paved pathways or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," states A Selvin Nadar, 56, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The single option is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

But others, including the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need financial support and improvement. However they worry that this plan – absent of resident participation – could potentially turn premium city property into an elite enclave, displacing the marginalized, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these excluded, displaced people who established the empty marshland into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and business activity, whose production is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about one million inhabitants living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Others will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of Mumbai, threatening to fragment a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Those allowed to remain in Dharavi will be given apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, communal way of living and working that has maintained the community for many years.

Industries from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are projected to shrink in number and be transferred to a designated "business area" separated from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to live in this community, the plan presents an existential threat. His rickety, multi-level operation makes leather coats – formal jackets, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the accommodations below and his workers and tailors – laborers from north India – reside on-site, enabling him to afford their labour. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are typically 10 times as high for a single room.

Threats and Warning

Within the administrative buildings nearby, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts a very different perspective. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying continental bread and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a terrace outside a restaurant and Ice-Cream. This represents a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't improvement for us," says Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the development company. Headed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the corporation has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities labels it a partnership, the business group invested nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A lawsuit claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – involving phone calls, direct threats and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by individuals they claim are associated with the business conglomerate.

Included in these alleged to have making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c