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Across several weeks, coercive phone calls continued. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, and then from the police themselves. In the end, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims he was summoned to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

Shaikh is one of many opposing a expensive project where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces demolished and modernized by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is exceptional in the planet," says the resident. "However their intention is to eradicate our community and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and often without proper sanitation, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

Among some individuals, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a developed area of luxury high-rises, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and apartments with two toilets is a hopeful vision come true.

"We don't have sufficient health services, paved pathways or water management and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," states a chai seller, 56, who relocated from southern India in 1982. "The single option is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

Yet certain residents, including Shaikh, are fighting against the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, historically ignored as informal housing, is urgently needing investment and development. However they fear that this project – lacking community input – is one that will transform valuable urban land into a luxury development, displacing the marginalized, immigrant populations who have lived there since generations ago.

This involved these excluded, migrant workers who developed the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and $2m per year, making it a major informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately 1 million people living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer neighborhood, fewer than half will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Others will be moved to barren areas and coastal regions on the distant periphery of Mumbai, potentially divide a long-established social network. Some will be denied housing at all.

Residents permitted to stay in Dharavi will be provided apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, communal way of living and working that has sustained Dharavi for so long.

Industries from tailoring to clay work and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be relocated to a designated "commercial zone" far from residential areas.

Survival Challenge

In the case of Shaikh, a leather artisan and multi-generational of his family to live in Dharavi, the project presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, three-storey facility makes apparel – tailored coats, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – distributed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Relatives lives in the accommodations downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from other states – live in the same building, enabling him to afford their labour. Outside Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are frequently significantly as high for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the administrative buildings nearby, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project depicts a very different outlook. Slickly dressed residents gather on cycles and electric vehicles, acquiring international bread and pastries and enlisting beverages on a patio near Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. It is a complete departure from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that sustains local residents.

"This is not development for us," says Shaikh. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will price people out for our community to continue."

Additionally, there exists distrust of the development company. Headed by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has been subject to claims of crony capitalism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

While local authorities calls it a joint project, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A case stating that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to vocally oppose the development, protesters and community members state they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – involving phone calls, direct threats and suggestions that opposing the initiative was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they claim work for the corporate group.

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