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For months, intimidating phone calls persisted. Originally, allegedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, and then from law enforcement directly. Finally, a local artisan claims he was ordered to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is part of a group fighting a high-value redevelopment plan where this historic settlement – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is exceptional in the planet," explains Shaikh. "However their intention is to destroy our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that dominate the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and often lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations produce dangerous fumes and the air is permeated by the overpowering odor of open sewers.

For certain residents, the prospect of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and apartments with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," explains a tea vendor, fifty-six, who migrated from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Local Protest

But others, such as this protester, are fighting against the project.

All recognize that this community, historically ignored as informal housing, is in stark need financial support and improvement. But they fear that this initiative – lacking community input – is one that will transform valuable urban land into a luxury development, forcing out the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who built up the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and commercial output, whose production is worth between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the packed 2.2 square kilometer area, fewer than half will be qualified for replacement housing in the project, which is projected to take seven years to accomplish. The remainder will be moved to undeveloped zones and saline fields on the remote edges of the metropolis, threatening to break up a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

People eligible to stay in the neighborhood will be allocated apartments in tower blocks, a substantial change from the evolved, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has maintained Dharavi for so long.

Businesses from clothing production to clay work and material recovery are likely to decrease in quantity and be moved to a designated "commercial zone" far from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time inhabitant to call home Dharavi, the project presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey workshop makes leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, fashionable garments – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

His family resides in the rooms underneath and his workers and garment workers – workers from north India – also sleep on-site, permitting him to afford their labour. Beyond Dharavi's enclave, Mumbai rents are often tenfold more expensive for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the administrative buildings in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows an alternative perspective. Fashionable people gather on bicycles and electric vehicles, buying international baguettes and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace outside a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. It is a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that supports local residents.

"This represents no development for residents," explains Shaikh. "It represents an enormous land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Run by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Even as local authorities describes it as a joint project, the business group contributed nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A lawsuit claiming that the initiative was improperly granted to the developer is under review in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to vocally oppose the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – comprising communications, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the project was tantamount to speaking against the country – by individuals they allege work for the business conglomerate.

Among those suspected of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c