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For months, intimidating phone calls continued. Initially, supposedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims he was called to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: remain silent or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is among those fighting a expensive project where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – faces razed and modernized by a multinational conglomerate.

"The distinctive community of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the planet," states the protester. "But their intention is to dismantle our community and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of Dharavi present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that loom over the area. Residences are assembled randomly and often without proper sanitation, informal businesses emit toxic smoke and the environment is saturated with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, shiny shopping centers and homes with proper sanitation is a hopeful vision achieved.

"We lack proper healthcare, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," explains a chai seller, fifty-six, who moved from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The single option is to tear it all down and construct proper housing."

Local Protest

However, some, like Shaikh, are fighting against the plan.

Everyone acknowledges that the slum, consistently overlooked as informal housing, is desperately requiring investment and development. However they are concerned that this plan – absent of community input – might turn premium city property into an elite enclave, displacing the disadvantaged, working-class residents who have lived there since the late 1800s.

It was these shunned, migrant workers who established the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of community resilience and commercial output, whose production is valued at between a significant amount and $2m a year, making it a major informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Among approximately 1 million inhabitants living in the crowded 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is expected to take a significant period to complete. Others will be moved to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of the metropolis, potentially fragment a historic neighborhood. Some will not get housing at all.

Those allowed to remain in the area will be given units in tower blocks, a major break from the evolved, communal way of residing and operating that has supported Dharavi for so long.

Commercial activities from clothing production to clay work and recycling are likely to reduce in scale and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" distant from people's residences.

Livelihood Crisis

For residents like the leather artisan, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to call home the slum, the project presents an existential threat. His rickety, multi-level workshop creates apparel – tailored coats, premium outerwear, decorated jackets – marketed in high-end shops in upscale neighborhoods and abroad.

Relatives dwells in the spaces downstairs and employees and sewers – migrants from north India – live on-site, enabling him to sustain operations. Beyond Dharavi's enclave, accommodation prices are often significantly costlier for minimal space.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the government offices in the vicinity, an illustrated mock-up of the transformation initiative illustrates an alternative vision for the future. Fashionable people mill about on bicycles and eco-friendly transport, buying continental baguettes and croissants and enlisting beverages on a terrace near a coffee shop and Ice-Cream. This represents a stark contrast from the inexpensive idli sambar breakfast and 5-rupee chai that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This is not development for our community," states the protester. "It represents a huge real estate deal that will render it impossible for us to survive."

There is also distrust of the development company. Managed by a powerful tycoon – one of India's most powerful and a close ally of the Indian prime minister – the business group has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it rejects.

Even as the state government calls it a collaborative effort, the business group contributed $950m for its 80% stake. A lawsuit claiming that the initiative was unfairly awarded to the developer is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

Since they began to actively protest the redevelopment, Shaikh and other residents assert they have been faced ongoing efforts of coercion and warning – including phone calls, clear intimidation and insinuations that criticizing the initiative was comparable with speaking against the country – by people they assert are associated with the corporate group.

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