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Over an extended period, coercive communications continued. At first, reportedly from a retired cop and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Ultimately, a local artisan claims he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is part of a group fighting a high-value redevelopment plan where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces bulldozed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the planet," states the resident. "Yet they want to eradicate our social fabric and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that loom over the settlement. Homes are constructed informally and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is saturated with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, modern retail complexes and residences with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We lack proper healthcare, proper streets or drainage and we have no places for youth to recreate," explains a chai seller, 56, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

However, some, like this protester, are fighting against the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. Yet they are concerned that this project – absent of public consultation – might transform valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have been there since generations ago.

It was these marginalized, relocated individuals who built up the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose economic value is worth between $1m and two million dollars a year, making it one of the world's largest unofficial markets.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately one million inhabitants living in the packed 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take seven years to finish. Others will be transferred to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the remote edges of the city, threatening to divide a historic social network. A portion will be denied housing at all.

Those allowed to continue living in the neighborhood will be allocated units in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has sustained this area for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are expected to decrease in quantity and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" distant from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For residents like this protester, a craftsman and third generation resident to live in this community, the plan presents a survival challenge. His rickety, multi-level operation produces leather coats – sharp blazers, luxury coats, fashionable garments – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family resides in the rooms below and laborers and tailors – workers from other states – live there, permitting him to sustain operations. Outside this community, accommodation prices are typically significantly as high for a single room.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the administrative buildings nearby, a visual representation of the redevelopment plan depicts a contrasting vision for the future. Fashionable people gather on cycles and electric vehicles, acquiring western-style baked goods and breakfast items and socializing on a terrace outside Dharavi Cafe and treat station. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that maintains local residents.

"This is not development for us," says Shaikh. "It represents a huge land development that will price people out for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the business conglomerate. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the government head – the corporation has faced accusations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it denies.

Even as administrative bodies calls it a partnership, the developer contributed a significant amount for its 80% stake. Legal proceedings stating that the project was questionably assigned to the business group is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to actively protest the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – comprising messages, direct threats and insinuations that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to opposing national interests – by people they assert work for the corporate group.

Included in these suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c