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Across several weeks, threatening messages recurred. Originally, supposedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh states he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is part of a group opposing a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – faces demolished and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The distinctive community of this area is unparalleled in the globe," states Shaikh. "Yet their intention is to eradicate our way of life and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The dank gullies of this community sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that loom over the settlement. Dwellings are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is saturated with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and homes with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision realized.

"We lack sufficient health services, proper streets or sewage systems and there are no spaces for kids to enjoy," explains a tea vendor, 56, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The only way is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Community Resistance

However, some, including Shaikh, are fighting against the redevelopment.

None deny that the slum, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need economic input and modernization. But they worry that this project – lacking community input – could potentially convert premium city property into a luxury development, displacing the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since generations ago.

It was these shunned, migrant workers who built up the empty marshland into a frequently examined example of self-reliance and commercial output, whose output is estimated at between one million dollars and $2m annually, making it a major unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Out of about a million inhabitants living in the packed 220-hectare neighborhood, less than 50% will be able for new homes in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be transferred to wastelands and saline fields on the distant periphery of the city, potentially divide a historic community. Certain individuals will not get homes at all.

People eligible to remain in the neighborhood will be provided apartments in high-rise buildings, a major break from the organic, communal way of residing and operating that has sustained the community for so long.

Industries from garment work to ceramic crafts and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to an allocated "business area" separated from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time resident to call home this community, the project presents a fundamental risk. His makeshift, multi-level workshop produces garments – tailored coats, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in high-end shops in south Mumbai and overseas.

Relatives resides in the spaces underneath and laborers and tailors – migrants from north India – reside in the same building, permitting him to sustain operations. Away from this community, Mumbai rents are typically 10 times costlier for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

At the government offices nearby, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative illustrates a very different outlook. Fashionable inhabitants gather on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, buying international baguettes and croissants and having coffee on a patio outside Dharavi Cafe and Ice-Cream. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that sustains local residents.

"This isn't development for our community," says the protester. "This constitutes a massive property transaction that will price people out for us to survive."

Additionally, there exists concern of the development company. Managed by a prominent businessman – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it denies.

While administrative bodies describes it as a joint project, the business group invested nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A case alleging that the initiative was questionably assigned to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to actively protest the project, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been experienced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – comprising messages, direct threats and suggestions that speaking against the project was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by individuals they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

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