Threats, Apprehension and Hope as India's financial capital Residents Await Redevelopment
Across several weeks, threatening messages recurred. At first, supposedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, and then from the authorities. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was summoned to the police station and told clearly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.
Shaikh is part of a group opposing a expensive redevelopment plan where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces bulldozed and transformed by a large business group.
"The unique ecosystem of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," says the resident. "However their intention is to destroy our social fabric and prevent our protests."
Contrasting Realities
The dank gullies of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Residences are built haphazardly and typically without proper sanitation, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the air is filled with the overpowering odor of open sewers.
For certain residents, the vision of a renewed Dharavi into a developed area of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and residences with proper sanitation is an aspirational dream achieved.
"We don't have proper healthcare, paved pathways or sewage systems and we have no places for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who migrated from his home state in 1982. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and build us new homes."
Local Protest
But others, like this protester, are resisting the plan.
Everyone acknowledges that the slum, historically ignored as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need financial support and improvement. Yet they worry that this initiative – without public consultation – might transform premium city property into a luxury development, displacing the marginalized, immigrant populations who have resided there since the late 1800s.
This involved these marginalized, displaced people who built up the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and economic productivity, whose economic value is worth between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it one of the world's largest unofficial markets.
Relocation Worries
Out of about a million people living in the packed 220-hectare zone, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the development, which is expected to take a significant period to complete. Others will be relocated to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the remote edges of Mumbai, threatening to break up a generations-old neighborhood. A portion will be denied housing at all.
People eligible to stay in the neighborhood will be allocated apartments in tower blocks, a major break from the natural, shared lifestyle of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for so long.
Businesses from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are projected to decrease in quantity and be transferred to a specific "business area" distant from homes.
Survival Challenge
For residents like this protester, a leather artisan and multi-generational resident to call home this community, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-storey facility makes garments – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – marketed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.
His family dwells in the accommodations downstairs and laborers and tailors – workers from other states – reside there, allowing him to sustain operations. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are typically 10 times costlier for basic accommodation.
Harassment and Intimidation
In the official facilities close by, a visual representation of the Dharavi project illustrates an alternative perspective. Slickly dressed people move around on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, purchasing western-style bread and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a patio adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This depicts a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that supports Dharavi's community.
"This is not development for residents," explains the protester. "It represents an enormous property transaction that will make it unaffordable for us to survive."
There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the government head – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it disputes.
Even as administrative bodies labels it a joint project, the business group contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A case stating that the redevelopment was unfairly awarded to the corporation is under review in India's supreme court.
Ongoing Pressure
From when they initiated to vocally oppose the project, local opponents state they have been subjected to an extended period of coercion and warning – comprising phone calls, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the initiative was equivalent to speaking against the country – by individuals they claim work for the corporate group.
Included in these alleged to have delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c