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For months, coercive phone calls continued. Initially, supposedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, later from the police themselves. Finally, one resident asserts he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many opposing a expensive redevelopment plan where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces bulldozed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of the slum is exceptional in the globe," states the resident. "However they want to dismantle our community and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the air is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and apartments with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, proper streets or drainage and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," explains A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who migrated from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

However, some, such as this protester, are opposing the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they fear that this project – without community input – is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these shunned, relocated individuals who built up the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and business activity, whose production is worth between $1m and two million dollars annually, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately a million people living in the packed 220-hectare neighborhood, fewer than half will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to complete. Others will be relocated to wastelands and coastal regions on the distant periphery of the city, risking fragment a long-established neighborhood. Certain individuals will not get homes at all.

People eligible to stay in Dharavi will be allocated apartments in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has sustained this area for many years.

Industries from garment work to clay work and recycling are projected to shrink in number and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" far from people's residences.

Survival Challenge

For those such as the leather artisan, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to call home the slum, the plan presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, three-storey operation produces apparel – sharp blazers, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – distributed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

His family dwells in the rooms downstairs and his workers and garment workers – workers from other states – also sleep in the same building, allowing him to manage costs. Outside the slum, housing costs are often 10 times as high for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the official facilities in the vicinity, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan illustrates an alternative vision for the future. Slickly dressed people move around on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring continental bread and croissants and having coffee on an outdoor area adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains the neighborhood.

"This is not development for residents," states the artisan. "It's a huge real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists distrust of the business conglomerate. Run by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and a supporter of the government head – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of favoritism and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Although the state government labels it a joint project, the developer paid a significant amount for its controlling interest. A lawsuit stating that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to vocally oppose the project, local opponents state they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – including phone calls, clear intimidation and insinuations that criticizing the development was equivalent to speaking against the country – by figures they assert represent the corporate group.

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