Threats, Fear and Optimism as India's financial capital Inhabitants Face Redevelopment

Across several weeks, coercive messages persisted. Initially, supposedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, later from the police themselves. Finally, one resident claims he was ordered to the police station and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is one of many opposing a expensive initiative where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of the slum is unparalleled in the planet," explains the protester. "But they want to destroy our way of life and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of this community present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that dominate the settlement. Residences are assembled randomly and often lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the air is permeated by the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and residences with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, roads or water management and we have no places for children to play," explains a chai seller, 56, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

However, some, such as this protester, are fighting against the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring investment and development. However they worry that this project – lacking resident participation – could potentially convert premium city property into an elite enclave, evicting the marginalized, immigrant populations who have been there since the late 1800s.

These were these excluded, relocated individuals who developed the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and commercial output, whose economic value is worth between one million dollars and a substantial sum annually, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the packed 2.2 square kilometer area, fewer than half will be qualified for new homes in the project, which is expected to take seven years to complete. Additional residents will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the distant periphery of the metropolis, threatening to break up a historic neighborhood. A portion will be denied homes at all.

Those allowed to remain in Dharavi will be provided flats in tower blocks, a substantial change from the evolved, collective approach of residing and operating that has sustained this area for generations.

Commercial activities from clothing production to pottery and waste processing are likely to shrink in number and be moved to a specific "industrial sector" separated from homes.

Existential Threat

In the case of the leather artisan, a craftsman and long-time inhabitant to call home the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level facility makes apparel – sharp blazers, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – distributed in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

His family lives in the rooms underneath and laborers and garment workers – migrants from different regions – live on-site, enabling him to sustain operations. Outside Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are typically 10 times costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

In the official facilities nearby, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan illustrates a very different perspective. Fashionable inhabitants gather on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing continental baked goods and pastries and enlisting beverages on a patio outside a restaurant and dessert parlor. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that maintains the neighborhood.

"This isn't development for residents," explains the artisan. "It's a massive property transaction that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

There is also concern of the business conglomerate. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Even as the state government describes it as a joint project, the developer invested nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the initiative was improperly granted to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to vocally oppose the redevelopment, local opponents assert they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, direct threats and implications that criticizing the development was equivalent to opposing national interests – by figures they assert work for the developer.

Among those accused of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c