Threats, Fear and Hope as Mumbai Residents Confront Demolition

For months, threatening communications persisted. At first, reportedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from the police themselves. In the end, one resident claims he was summoned to the local precinct and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a expensive initiative where this historic settlement – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces razed and modernized by a corporate giant.

"The culture of the slum is like nowhere else in the world," states the resident. "However their intention is to destroy our way of life and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of the slum sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the neighborhood. Dwellings are built haphazardly and often lacking adequate facilities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the environment is permeated by the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a developed area of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, contemporary malls and residences with multiple bathrooms is an aspirational dream achieved.

"There's no proper healthcare, roads or sewage systems and we have no places for youth to recreate," says a chai seller, in his fifties, who moved from Tamil Nadu in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

But others, like the leather artisan, are opposing the project.

None deny that this community, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing investment and development. But they are concerned that this plan – lacking public consultation – could potentially turn valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, evicting the marginalized, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these shunned, displaced people who built up the uninhabited area into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and business activity, whose output is valued at between one million dollars and two million dollars a year, making it one of the world's largest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Out of about a million people living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer zone, a minority will be eligible for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is projected to take an extended timeframe to finish. Additional residents will be moved to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of the city, risking break up a historic social network. Certain individuals will receive no homes at all.

Residents permitted to continue living in the neighborhood will be provided units in tower blocks, a significant rupture from the evolved, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for many years.

Businesses from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to decrease in quantity and be moved to a designated "industrial sector" far from people's residences.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as Shaikh, a craftsman and long-time inhabitant to call home the slum, the redevelopment presents an existential threat. His informal, three-storey operation makes garments – tailored coats, suede trenches, decorated jackets – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

Relatives lives in the rooms downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from different regions – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are frequently significantly more expensive for minimal space.

Threats and Warning

In the government offices close by, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan shows a contrasting outlook. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on cycles and e-vehicles, acquiring western-style baked goods and croissants and having coffee on an outdoor area adjacent to Dharavi Cafe and treat station. This depicts a world away from the affordable idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that sustains Dharavi's community.

"This isn't progress for residents," says the artisan. "It's a huge property transaction that will price people out for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the corporate group. Run by an influential industrialist – among the country's wealthiest and an associate of the government head – the business group has faced accusations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Although local authorities calls it a joint project, the corporation invested nearly a billion dollars for its 80% stake. A case alleging that the initiative was questionably assigned to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

From when they initiated to publicly resist the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been faced a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – involving phone calls, clear intimidation and suggestions that speaking against the project was equivalent to opposing national interests – by people they assert are associated with the corporate group.

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