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Over an extended period, intimidating phone calls continued. Initially, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, later from law enforcement directly. Ultimately, one resident asserts he was ordered to the police station and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many resisting a high-value initiative where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – will be demolished and transformed by a large business group.

"The culture of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," says Shaikh. "However they want to destroy our community and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that overshadow the area. Homes are constructed informally and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of premium apartments, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, paved pathways or sewage systems and there are no spaces for children to play," says a chai seller, fifty-six, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and construct proper housing."

Community Resistance

But others, including this protester, are fighting against the project.

None deny that this community, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need financial support and improvement. However they worry that this initiative – absent of community input – might turn valuable urban land into a luxury development, displacing the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have resided there since generations ago.

This involved these excluded, relocated individuals who built up the empty marshland into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and commercial output, whose production is valued at between $1m and two million dollars a year, making it a major unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the dense sprawling zone, less than 50% will be eligible for new homes in the project, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to complete. Others will be relocated to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of Mumbai, threatening to break up a generations-old social network. Certain individuals will be denied homes at all.

Those allowed to remain in the area will be allocated flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of living and working that has supported the community for many years.

Businesses from tailoring to clay work and waste processing are expected to decrease in quantity and be moved to a designated "industrial sector" separated from people's residences.

Existential Threat

In the case of this protester, a leather artisan and long-time inhabitant to reside in Dharavi, the project presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-storey facility makes leather coats – formal jackets, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – distributed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Household members lives in the rooms downstairs and laborers and tailors – migrants from different regions – reside on-site, enabling him to manage costs. Outside Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are often 10 times more expensive for basic accommodation.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the official facilities nearby, a visual representation of the transformation initiative shows a contrasting perspective. Well-groomed inhabitants move around on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international baguettes and breakfast items and having coffee on an outdoor area adjacent to a restaurant and dessert parlor. This represents a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains local residents.

"This represents no progress for our community," explains the protester. "This constitutes an enormous real estate deal that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Additionally, there exists distrust of the development company. Headed by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Although the state government calls it a joint project, the business group paid nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A case stating that the project was questionably assigned to the developer is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, local opponents state they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – involving communications, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the initiative was tantamount to opposing national interests – by individuals they claim work for the corporate group.

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