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For months, coercive phone calls recurred. Initially, allegedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, and then from the police themselves. In the end, one resident asserts he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: keep quiet or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is one of many resisting a multimillion-dollar initiative where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be bulldozed and transformed by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is exceptional in the planet," explains Shaikh. "But they want to dismantle our social fabric and silence our voices."

Opposing Environments

The dank gullies of this community sit in stark contrast to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Residences are built haphazardly and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations emit toxic smoke and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centers and homes with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream realized.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, roads or water management and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," says a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from southern India in that period. "The only way is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Local Protest

But others, including the leather artisan, are opposing the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need investment and development. However they are concerned that this plan – without resident participation – is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, evicting the lower-caste, migrant communities who have lived there since the late 1800s.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who built up the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and business activity, whose production is worth between a significant amount and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately a million residents living in the packed sprawling neighborhood, a minority will be qualified for new homes in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be moved to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, risking fragment a long-established social network. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to stay in Dharavi will be allocated flats in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has supported this area for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to clay work and waste processing are expected to reduce in scale and be transferred to an allocated "business area" distant from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and multi-generational inhabitant to call home the slum, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His informal, multi-level facility makes garments – tailored coats, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – marketed in premium stores in south Mumbai and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the spaces underneath and his workers and garment workers – workers from other states – reside in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Beyond the slum, accommodation prices are typically significantly as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

In the official facilities in the vicinity, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan shows a very different vision for the future. Fashionable people gather on bicycles and e-vehicles, buying international bread and breakfast items and having coffee on a patio adjacent to a restaurant and Ice-Cream. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that supports local residents.

"This is not improvement for residents," explains Shaikh. "It represents a massive property transaction that will render it impossible for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the development company. Managed by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it rejects.

Although the state government labels it a collaborative effort, the developer paid $950m for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings claiming that the initiative was improperly granted to the developer is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to actively protest the redevelopment, local opponents state they have been experienced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, explicit warnings and implications that opposing the initiative was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they assert are associated with the developer.

Included in these alleged to have issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c