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Across several weeks, coercive messages continued. Initially, allegedly from a retired cop and a former defense officer, and then from the authorities. In the end, one resident asserts he was ordered to the police station and instructed bluntly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is one of many resisting a high-value initiative where Dharavi – a massive informal community with rich history – faces razed and redeveloped by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of the slum is unparalleled in the planet," says Shaikh. "But the plan aims to destroy our community and stop us speaking out."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of the slum present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the neighborhood. Homes are constructed informally and typically missing basic amenities, small-scale operations release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is saturated with the suffocating smell of exposed drainage.

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

"There's no sufficient health services, proper streets or water management and we have no places for kids to enjoy," states a chai seller, in his fifties, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Local Protest

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

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need investment and development. Yet they are concerned that this project – lacking resident participation – is one that will convert a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, displacing the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

These were these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into a frequently examined example of local enterprise and economic productivity, whose economic value is estimated at between a significant amount and a substantial sum a year, making it among the globe's biggest unofficial markets.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately one million residents living in the dense 220-hectare zone, a minority will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is estimated to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. The remainder will be moved to undeveloped zones and coastal regions on the distant periphery of the city, potentially divide a generations-old community. Some will be denied residences at all.

Residents permitted to stay in Dharavi will be provided apartments in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, collective approach of residing and operating that has sustained Dharavi for many years.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be transferred to a designated "business area" separated from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For residents like the leather artisan, a leather artisan and third generation inhabitant to reside in the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level workshop produces garments – tailored coats, premium outerwear, fashionable garments – distributed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the rooms downstairs and laborers and tailors – laborers from north India – reside in the same building, permitting him to manage costs. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are typically tenfold as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the government offices in the vicinity, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project depicts a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed people gather on cycles and electric vehicles, acquiring international baked goods and pastries and having coffee on a patio near a restaurant and dessert parlor. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and budget beverage that supports Dharavi's community.

"This isn't development for residents," explains the protester. "It represents an enormous property transaction that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's concern of the business conglomerate. Managed by a prominent businessman – among the country's wealthiest and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of favoritism and ethical concerns, which it denies.

While the state government labels it a partnership, the corporation contributed nearly a billion dollars for its controlling interest. A case alleging that the redevelopment was questionably assigned to the developer is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents state they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including communications, clear intimidation and implications that criticizing the project was comparable with opposing national interests – by people they claim work for the corporate group.

Among those suspected of issuing the threats is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c