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For months, intimidating phone calls continued. At first, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, subsequently from law enforcement directly. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was summoned to the police station and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

The leather artisan is one of many fighting a expensive project where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces bulldozed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of Dharavi is exceptional in the globe," says the resident. "But they want to dismantle our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of this community stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and elite residences that dominate the area. Homes are built haphazardly and frequently missing basic amenities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is saturated with the unpleasant stench of uncovered waste channels.

To some, the vision of the slum's redevelopment into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, shiny shopping centers and homes with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We don't have adequate medical facilities, proper streets or sewage systems and there's nowhere for children to play," explains a tea vendor, 56, who relocated from southern India in that period. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, such as the leather artisan, are resisting the redevelopment.

None deny that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. But they fear that this plan – absent of community input – could potentially transform valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, evicting the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have been there since generations ago.

This involved these shunned, displaced people who established the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose output is worth between $1m and two million dollars per year, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately a million residents living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, fewer than half will be eligible for replacement housing in the redevelopment, which is estimated to take seven years to accomplish. Others will be transferred to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the distant periphery of the city, threatening to break up a historic neighborhood. Certain individuals will receive no homes at all.

People eligible to remain in Dharavi will be allocated flats in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the evolved, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has sustained Dharavi for generations.

Businesses from garment work to pottery and waste processing are likely to shrink in number and be relocated to a designated "industrial sector" distant from homes.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as the leather artisan, a workshop owner and third generation of his family to reside in Dharavi, the redevelopment presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-floor operation makes garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family resides in the rooms downstairs and laborers and sewers – migrants from other states – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Beyond this community, housing costs are typically 10 times more expensive for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

At the administrative buildings nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative illustrates a contrasting perspective. Fashionable inhabitants move around on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, purchasing western-style baguettes and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a terrace outside Dharavi Cafe and dessert parlor. This represents a complete departure from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that supports local residents.

"This represents no development for our community," states the artisan. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists concern of the development company. Run by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and a close ally of the national leader – the conglomerate has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it rejects.

While administrative bodies calls it a partnership, the business group invested $950m for its majority share. A lawsuit claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the developer is under review in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including messages, clear intimidation and suggestions that criticizing the project was equivalent to speaking against the country – by figures they assert work for the business conglomerate.

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