Intimidation, Anxiety and Hope as India's financial capital Slum Dwellers Await Redevelopment

Across several weeks, coercive communications persisted. At first, allegedly from a former police officer and an ex-military commander, subsequently from the police themselves. In the end, one resident states he was ordered to the police station and told clearly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

The leather artisan is part of a group resisting a multimillion-dollar initiative where this historic settlement – a massive informal community with rich history – will be razed and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of the slum is unparalleled in the globe," states the resident. "Yet the plan aims to destroy our community and prevent our protests."

Dual Worlds

The dank gullies of the slum sit in stark contrast to the towering buildings and Bollywood penthouses that overshadow the area. Dwellings are constructed informally and typically missing basic amenities, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is filled with the unpleasant stench of exposed drainage.

To some, the prospect of a renewed Dharavi into a modern district of luxury high-rises, neat parks, modern retail complexes and residences with two toilets is a hopeful vision achieved.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for youth to recreate," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who relocated from Tamil Nadu in that period. "The sole solution is to clear the area and build us new homes."

Local Protest

However, some, like this protester, are resisting the project.

Everyone acknowledges that this community, historically ignored as informal housing, is in stark need economic input and modernization. Yet they fear that this initiative – without community input – is one that will convert premium city property into an elite enclave, evicting the disadvantaged, migrant communities who have lived there since generations ago.

It was these excluded, displaced people who developed the vacant wetlands into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and commercial output, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and a substantial sum a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately one million people living in the crowded 2.2 square kilometer zone, less than 50% will be able for alternative accommodation in the development, which is projected to take a significant period to finish. The remainder will be moved to wastelands and saline fields on the far outskirts of the city, potentially divide a long-established community. Certain individuals will be denied housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the area will be provided apartments in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the organic, communal way of dwelling and laboring that has supported the community for so long.

Commercial activities from tailoring to pottery and material recovery are expected to decrease in quantity and be transferred to a specific "business area" distant from residential areas.

Existential Threat

In the case of this protester, a workshop owner and third generation of his family to call home the slum, the project presents a survival challenge. His makeshift, multi-level facility produces apparel – sharp blazers, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – marketed in premium stores in the city's affluent areas and overseas.

His family dwells in the accommodations downstairs and employees and sewers – workers from other states – also sleep on-site, permitting him to manage costs. Outside Dharavi's enclave, housing costs are typically 10 times costlier for a single room.

Harassment and Intimidation

In the government offices close by, a conceptual model of the transformation initiative depicts a very different outlook. Fashionable residents move around on two-wheelers and eco-friendly transport, acquiring western-style bread and breakfast items and having coffee on an outdoor area adjacent to a coffee shop and dessert parlor. This represents a world away from the affordable idli sambar breakfast and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This represents no progress for residents," states the protester. "It's an enormous real estate deal that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

There is also skepticism of the business conglomerate. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Even as the state government describes it as a collaborative effort, the corporation paid nearly a billion dollars for its majority share. A lawsuit alleging that the redevelopment was improperly granted to the corporation is being considered in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

From when they initiated to publicly resist the project, local opponents state they have been subjected to an extended period of harassment and intimidation – including phone calls, direct threats and insinuations that speaking against the initiative was equivalent to opposing national interests – by individuals they claim work for the developer.

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