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Over an extended period, intimidating messages continued. Originally, reportedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, later from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was called to law enforcement headquarters and told clearly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many resisting a expensive initiative where one of India's largest slums – a massive informal community with rich history – will be demolished and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The unique ecosystem of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the planet," says Shaikh. "Yet they want to eradicate our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that overshadow the settlement. Residences are assembled randomly and typically missing basic amenities, unregulated industries produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and homes with two toilets is an aspirational dream achieved.

"There's no proper healthcare, paved pathways or drainage and there are no spaces for children to play," says a tea vendor, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

But others, including Shaikh, are resisting the project.

None deny that Dharavi, long neglected as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. However they worry that this plan – absent of community input – is one that will transform premium city property into a luxury development, evicting the marginalized, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these excluded, displaced people who built up the uninhabited area into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose production is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about 1 million inhabitants living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, a minority will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is expected to take seven years to finish. Additional residents will be transferred to wastelands and saline fields on the remote edges of the city, potentially divide a long-established community. A portion will not get homes at all.

People eligible to stay in the area will be given flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has maintained this area for generations.

Businesses from clothing production to clay work and recycling are projected to decrease in quantity and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

In the case of this protester, a craftsman and third generation inhabitant to live in this community, the project presents a fundamental risk. His informal, three-storey operation produces leather coats – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – sold in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and abroad.

Household members lives in the rooms downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from north India – reside in the same building, allowing him to manage costs. Outside this community, Mumbai rents are typically significantly as high for a single room.

Pressure and Coercion

At the official facilities nearby, a visual representation of the transformation initiative illustrates an alternative outlook. Fashionable people move around on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying international baked goods and breakfast items and having coffee on a terrace near a coffee shop and treat station. It is a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that supports Dharavi's community.

"This is not progress for residents," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a huge property transaction that will price people out for our community to continue."

There is also concern of the corporate group. Headed by a prominent businessman – a leading figure and an associate of the government head – the business group has been subject to claims of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Even as local authorities describes it as a collaborative effort, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, local opponents state they have been experienced ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – comprising phone calls, explicit warnings and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was equivalent to speaking against the country – by people they assert work for the corporate group.

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