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For months, threatening communications recurred. At first, allegedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, later from the authorities. In the end, one resident asserts he was called to the local precinct and told clearly: keep quiet or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is among those opposing a multimillion-dollar project where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be demolished and redeveloped by a corporate giant.

"The culture of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," states the resident. "However the plan aims to destroy our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of this community present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and luxury apartments that loom over the area. Residences are assembled randomly and typically lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and homes with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future achieved.

"We lack sufficient health services, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who moved from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, like this protester, are resisting the plan.

None deny that the slum, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing economic input and modernization. But they worry that this initiative – absent of public consultation – is one that will convert premium city property into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have been there since generations ago.

It was these shunned, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and commercial output, whose output is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum per year, making it a major unofficial markets.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly 1 million residents living in the packed sprawling area, fewer than half will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be relocated to barren areas and salt plains on the remote edges of Mumbai, threatening to break up a historic community. Certain individuals will receive no housing at all.

Those allowed to stay in the area will be allocated apartments in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the natural, collective approach of living and working that has supported Dharavi for many years.

Industries from garment work to clay work and waste processing are projected to reduce in scale and be transferred to a specific "commercial zone" distant from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

In the case of the leather artisan, a craftsman and long-time resident to live in this community, the project presents a survival challenge. His informal, three-storey operation makes garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, decorated jackets – distributed in high-end shops in the city's affluent areas and internationally.

Household members dwells in the rooms below and employees and sewers – laborers from other states – also sleep in the same building, enabling him to sustain operations. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are frequently tenfold more expensive for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the official facilities nearby, a visual representation of the Dharavi project depicts an alternative outlook. Well-groomed residents gather on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring western-style bread and breakfast items and having coffee on a patio adjacent to a restaurant and treat station. This depicts a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and 5-rupee chai that sustains the neighborhood.

"This represents no development for residents," says the artisan. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will price people out for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the development company. Run by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it denies.

While local authorities describes it as a partnership, the business group contributed $950m for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was questionably assigned to the developer is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to publicly resist the project, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been faced an extended period of coercion and warning – including phone calls, explicit warnings and insinuations that speaking against the development was comparable with opposing national interests – by people they assert represent the corporate group.

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