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For months, coercive phone calls persisted. Initially, allegedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many resisting a high-value redevelopment plan where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is like nowhere else in the world," says Shaikh. "However the plan aims to dismantle our community and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of this community present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is permeated by the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of luxury high-rises, organized recreational areas, modern retail complexes and apartments with two toilets is an optimistic future realized.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," states a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Resident Opposition

However, some, like the leather artisan, are resisting the project.

All recognize that the slum, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. Yet they fear that this initiative – without public consultation – could potentially convert premium city property into a playground for the rich, forcing out the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have resided there since generations ago.

This involved these shunned, relocated individuals who built up the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and business activity, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and $2m per year, making it a major unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately 1 million inhabitants living in the packed sprawling neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for replacement housing in the project, which is projected to take a significant period to finish. Others will be transferred to wastelands and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, risking break up a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be given apartments in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the evolved, shared lifestyle of living and working that has maintained this area for many years.

Businesses from garment work to clay work and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to a designated "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

For those such as this protester, a workshop owner and long-time inhabitant to live in the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey facility makes apparel – tailored coats, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and overseas.

Relatives dwells in the rooms downstairs and employees and sewers – migrants from different regions – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are frequently 10 times as high for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

In the government offices in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative depicts a very different vision for the future. Slickly dressed residents mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, buying western-style bread and breakfast items and having coffee on a terrace outside Dharavi Cafe and treat station. It is a stark contrast from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains Dharavi's community.

"This represents no progress for our community," states the artisan. "This constitutes an enormous property transaction that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the business conglomerate. Headed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Even as local authorities calls it a joint project, the corporation paid a significant amount for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in the top court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – comprising phone calls, direct threats and implications that opposing the development was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they allege represent the developer.

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