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For months, intimidating phone calls continued. At first, reportedly from a retired cop and an ex-military commander, later from the police themselves. Ultimately, a local artisan asserts he was ordered to law enforcement headquarters and instructed bluntly: stop speaking out or encounter real trouble.

This third-generation resident is part of a group resisting a expensive project where one of India's largest slums – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – is scheduled to be demolished and redeveloped by a large business group.

"The unique ecosystem of this area is like nowhere else in the globe," says the protester. "Yet the plan aims to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The cramped lanes of the slum present a dramatic difference to the soaring skyscrapers and elite residences that dominate the neighborhood. Dwellings are constructed informally and often without proper sanitation, unregulated industries produce dangerous fumes and the environment is filled with the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

For certain residents, the vision of Dharavi transformed into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and residences with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future realized.

"We lack adequate medical facilities, roads or sewage systems and we have no places for children to play," explains a tea vendor, in his fifties, who relocated from southern India in that period. "The only way is to tear it all down and provide modern residences."

Local Protest

But others, including Shaikh, are opposing the project.

None deny that the slum, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is urgently needing investment and development. Yet they worry that this plan – without resident participation – might convert valuable urban land into an elite enclave, displacing the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since the nineteenth century.

It was these marginalized, relocated individuals who established the empty marshland into an extensively researched phenomenon of self-reliance and commercial output, whose production is valued at between one million dollars and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Relocation Worries

Of the roughly one million residents living in the dense sprawling area, a minority will be qualified for new homes in the redevelopment, which is projected to take a significant period to complete. The remainder will be relocated to barren areas and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, risking fragment a generations-old community. Certain individuals will not get housing at all.

People eligible to continue living in Dharavi will be provided units in tower blocks, a major break from the organic, shared lifestyle of living and working that has maintained Dharavi for generations.

Commercial activities from garment work to ceramic crafts and material recovery are likely to shrink in number and be transferred to a specific "commercial zone" distant from homes.

Livelihood Crisis

For those such as the leather artisan, a workshop owner and long-time of his family to live in this community, the plan presents a fundamental risk. His rickety, three-floor workshop produces garments – sharp blazers, premium outerwear, studded bomber jackets – sold in premium stores in south Mumbai and overseas.

His family resides in the rooms downstairs and employees and garment workers – migrants from different regions – live in the same building, enabling him to afford their labour. Away from the slum, accommodation prices are typically 10 times more expensive for basic accommodation.

Threats and Warning

In the administrative buildings close by, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan illustrates a very different outlook. Fashionable residents mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international baguettes and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a terrace near a restaurant and Ice-Cream. It is a world away from the inexpensive idli sambar first meal and budget beverage that maintains the neighborhood.

"This represents no development for residents," states Shaikh. "This constitutes an enormous land development that will make it unaffordable for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the corporate group. Run by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and a supporter of the national leader – the business group has encountered allegations of preferential treatment and questionable practices, which it disputes.

While the state government labels it a collaborative effort, the business group paid $950m for its controlling interest. A case alleging that the project was improperly granted to the corporation is under review in the nation's highest judicial body.

Continued Intimidation

After they started to publicly resist the redevelopment, protesters and community members assert they have been subjected to ongoing efforts of harassment and intimidation – involving messages, clear intimidation and implications that opposing the initiative was tantamount to speaking against the country – by individuals they assert are associated with the business conglomerate.

Among those suspected of making intimidations is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c