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Over an extended period, coercive messages recurred. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a former defense officer, later from the police themselves. In the end, a local artisan asserts he was ordered to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is part of a group resisting a high-value project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is exceptional in the globe," states the resident. "But the plan aims to destroy our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and elite residences that overshadow the area. Residences are assembled randomly and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is saturated with the unpleasant stench of open sewers.

For certain residents, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of premium apartments, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and residences with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have sufficient health services, proper streets or water management and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," states A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who moved from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Local Protest

However, some, such as this protester, are resisting the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, historically ignored as informal housing, is in stark need financial support and improvement. Yet they fear that this plan – lacking community input – is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have lived there since the late 1800s.

It was these excluded, relocated individuals who developed the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose output is worth between $1m and a substantial sum a year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Displacement Concerns

Out of about one million residents living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer area, a minority will be qualified for replacement housing in the project, which is estimated to take seven years to accomplish. The remainder will be transferred to barren areas and saline fields on the distant periphery of Mumbai, potentially divide a historic community. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

People eligible to remain in the area will be allocated units in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has supported Dharavi for generations.

Industries from clothing production to pottery and recycling are likely to shrink in number and be transferred to a specific "industrial sector" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a leather artisan and third generation inhabitant to call home Dharavi, the plan presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level facility creates leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family lives in the accommodations downstairs and his workers and garment workers – workers from different regions – also sleep on-site, allowing him to afford their labour. Beyond this community, housing costs are typically 10 times more expensive for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the government offices nearby, a visual representation of the Dharavi project illustrates a contrasting outlook. Fashionable people move around on bicycles and electric vehicles, purchasing international baked goods and croissants and socializing on an outdoor area adjacent to a restaurant and treat station. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and budget beverage that sustains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't progress for our community," says the artisan. "It represents a huge real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists concern of the development company. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the national leader – the corporation has encountered allegations of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

While administrative bodies labels it a partnership, the business group invested a significant amount for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings claiming that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the business group is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to publicly resist the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced an extended period of harassment and intimidation – involving communications, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the initiative was comparable with opposing national interests – by individuals they allege are associated with the corporate group.

Among those suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c