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For months, threatening messages recurred. Initially, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves. In the end, one resident claims he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is one of many resisting a expensive project where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be demolished and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the planet," states the protester. "However the plan aims to destroy our community and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and elite residences that overshadow the neighborhood. Dwellings are built haphazardly and typically without proper sanitation, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the environment is filled with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, neat parks, modern retail complexes and homes with multiple bathrooms is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, paved pathways or water management and we have no places for youth to recreate," says a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to clear the area and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

But others, such as this protester, are fighting against the redevelopment.

None deny that the slum, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this project – absent of community input – is one that will transform a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these excluded, displaced people who established the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and commercial output, whose production is valued at between a significant amount and a substantial sum annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the dense 220-hectare zone, fewer than half will be able for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to complete. The remainder will be moved to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the remote edges of the metropolis, risking divide a long-established social network. Some will not get residences at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be provided units in multi-story structures, a substantial change from the natural, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has supported Dharavi for many years.

Businesses from clothing production to pottery and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be relocated to a specific "business area" separated from residential areas.

Existential Threat

In the case of Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time of his family to call home Dharavi, the plan presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level facility creates leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, decorated jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and abroad.

Household members lives in the rooms below and his workers and garment workers – migrants from different regions – also sleep in the same building, permitting him to sustain operations. Away from this community, housing costs are frequently tenfold costlier for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the administrative buildings nearby, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan shows a contrasting perspective. Fashionable people gather on cycles and e-vehicles, acquiring continental baked goods and croissants and socializing on a terrace outside a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that maintains the neighborhood.

"This represents no improvement for our community," explains Shaikh. "It's an enormous real estate deal that will price people out for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists skepticism of the corporate group. Run by a powerful tycoon – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the government head – the business group has faced accusations of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Even as local authorities labels it a partnership, the corporation contributed $950m for its majority share. A lawsuit alleging that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the top court.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to vocally oppose the project, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced ongoing efforts of pressure and threats – comprising phone calls, explicit warnings and suggestions that speaking against the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by people they assert are associated with the developer.

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