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Across several weeks, threatening communications continued. At first, allegedly from an ex-law enforcement official and an ex-military commander, subsequently from the police themselves. Ultimately, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh asserts he was called to the local precinct and instructed bluntly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is among those fighting a multimillion-dollar initiative where this historic settlement – a massive informal community with rich history – will be razed and transformed by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is exceptional in the world," explains Shaikh. "Yet the plan aims to destroy our social fabric and prevent our protests."

Opposing Environments

The cramped lanes of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that dominate the neighborhood. Residences are constructed informally and often lacking adequate facilities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the atmosphere is permeated by the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

For certain residents, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with two toilets is an optimistic future come true.

"We don't have proper healthcare, roads or sewage systems and there are no spaces for youth to recreate," says A Selvin Nadar, fifty-six, who moved from southern India in that period. "The single option is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Local Protest

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

All recognize that this community, consistently overlooked as an illegal encroachment, is desperately requiring economic input and modernization. However they worry that this project – absent of community input – is one that will convert premium city property into an elite enclave, displacing the lower-caste, migrant communities who have resided there since the late 1800s.

It was these shunned, displaced people who developed the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and business activity, whose economic value is worth between $1m and a substantial sum a year, making it one of the world's largest informal economies.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately a million inhabitants living in the packed 2.2 square kilometer area, fewer than half will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take a significant period to finish. Additional residents will be moved to barren areas and saline fields on the remote edges of the city, risking break up a long-established neighborhood. A portion will not get homes at all.

Residents permitted to stay in the neighborhood will be allocated flats in high-rise buildings, a major break from the natural, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has maintained the community for so long.

Industries from tailoring to pottery and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be transferred to a specific "business area" distant from residential areas.

Livelihood Crisis

For residents like Shaikh, a leather artisan and third generation inhabitant to reside in the slum, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-storey facility creates garments – formal jackets, suede trenches, fashionable garments – distributed in luxury boutiques in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family resides in the spaces underneath and his workers and garment workers – laborers from north India – live there, enabling him to manage costs. Outside the slum, accommodation prices are frequently tenfold more expensive for a single room.

Threats and Warning

At the administrative buildings in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative illustrates a very different perspective. Well-groomed residents gather on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring continental baked goods and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace near a restaurant and treat station. This represents a complete departure from the inexpensive idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't improvement for us," explains Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous property transaction that will price people out for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the development company. Run by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and a supporter of the Indian prime minister – the business group has been subject to claims of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as the state government labels it a collaborative effort, the business group invested $950m for its majority share. A case stating that the project was unfairly awarded to the business group is under review in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

Since they began to publicly resist the project, protesters and community members state they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including communications, explicit warnings and suggestions that opposing the initiative was equivalent to opposing national interests – by figures they allege are associated with the business conglomerate.

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