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For months, coercive messages continued. Originally, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and warned explicitly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is one of many resisting a expensive redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is like nowhere else in the planet," states the protester. "But their intention is to dismantle our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of the slum stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that dominate the area. Homes are assembled randomly and often without proper sanitation, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"There's no sufficient health services, proper streets or water management and there's nowhere for kids to enjoy," explains A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

But others, including Shaikh, are resisting the redevelopment.

None deny that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. But they fear that this initiative – absent of resident participation – might convert valuable urban land into an elite enclave, forcing out the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have been there since the nineteenth century.

These were these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose output is worth between one million dollars and $2m per year, making it a major informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately 1 million people living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, fewer than half will be able for replacement housing in the development, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Others will be relocated to wastelands and saline fields on the remote edges of Mumbai, threatening to fragment a historic social network. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to remain in Dharavi will be given units in high-rise buildings, a significant rupture from the natural, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has sustained this area for generations.

Industries from clothing production to pottery and waste processing are projected to reduce in scale and be moved to an allocated "industrial sector" distant from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a workshop owner and third generation of his family to reside in the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level facility creates leather coats – sharp blazers, luxury coats, fashionable garments – marketed in luxury boutiques in upscale neighborhoods and internationally.

Relatives dwells in the spaces downstairs and employees and garment workers – workers from other states – reside on-site, enabling him to sustain operations. Outside this community, accommodation prices are frequently 10 times as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

Within the government offices close by, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project illustrates a very different outlook. Well-groomed people mill about on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring continental bread and pastries and socializing on a terrace adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that sustains local residents.

"This represents no progress for us," explains the protester. "It's a massive land development that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the corporate group. Headed by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has faced accusations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it disputes.

Even as the state government labels it a collaborative effort, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings stating that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is being considered in the top court.

Ongoing Pressure

From when they initiated to actively protest the development, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been subjected to an extended period of coercion and warning – involving messages, clear intimidation and suggestions that speaking against the development was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they assert represent the corporate group.

Part of the group alleged to have issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c