Intimidation, Anxiety and Aspiration as India's financial capital Residents Await Redevelopment

Over an extended period, intimidating messages persisted. Originally, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, and then from law enforcement directly. Finally, a local artisan states he was called to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is part of a group fighting a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be bulldozed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," explains Shaikh. "However they want to eradicate our community and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and elite residences that dominate the area. Dwellings are built haphazardly and often missing basic amenities, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and homes with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, paved pathways or sewage systems and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," states A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to clear the area and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

But others, like the leather artisan, are fighting against the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, historically ignored as informal housing, is desperately requiring financial support and improvement. But they fear that this project – without resident participation – could potentially convert valuable urban land into a luxury development, forcing out the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these marginalized, displaced people who developed the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and commercial output, whose output is worth between a significant amount and two million dollars annually, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about 1 million inhabitants living in the packed sprawling zone, a minority will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take a significant period to complete. Others will be relocated to wastelands and salt plains on the remote edges of the city, potentially divide a long-established community. Certain individuals will be denied homes at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in Dharavi will be allocated apartments in multi-story structures, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has maintained this area for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to pottery and recycling are projected to reduce in scale and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like the leather artisan, a workshop owner and third generation resident to reside in this community, the project presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level facility creates garments – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

His family lives in the spaces underneath and employees and sewers – workers from different regions – also sleep there, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside this community, Mumbai rents are frequently significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the official facilities close by, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts an alternative vision for the future. Well-groomed residents gather on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing western-style baguettes and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. This depicts a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains the neighborhood.

"This isn't improvement for us," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a massive real estate deal that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's concern of the corporate group. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the business group has been subject to claims of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as local authorities labels it a partnership, the business group contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit claiming that the project was improperly granted to the developer is pending in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the project, local opponents assert they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – comprising communications, explicit warnings and implications that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to anti-national sentiment – by people they allege are associated with the developer.

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