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Across several weeks, coercive communications continued. Initially, reportedly from a former police officer and a retired army general, subsequently from the police themselves. Finally, a local artisan states he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

Shaikh is part of a group resisting a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan where Dharavi – one of India’s largest and most storied slums – is scheduled to be razed and transformed by a large business group.

"The distinctive community of this area is exceptional in the planet," states Shaikh. "However the plan aims to dismantle our social fabric and silence our voices."

Contrasting Realities

The dank gullies of this community stand in sharp opposition to the soaring skyscrapers and luxury apartments that overshadow the settlement. Homes are assembled randomly and often missing basic amenities, informal businesses produce dangerous fumes and the environment is filled with the overpowering odor of exposed drainage.

To some, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a glistening neighborhood of high-end towers, organized recreational areas, contemporary malls and apartments with proper sanitation is an optimistic future realized.

"There's no adequate medical facilities, proper streets or drainage and there are no spaces for children to play," says a chai seller, 56, who relocated from southern India in that period. "The sole solution is to demolish everything and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

Yet certain residents, like Shaikh, are opposing the project.

None deny that the slum, historically ignored as unauthorized settlement, is urgently needing financial support and improvement. However they worry that this plan – without public consultation – might turn premium city property into a luxury development, evicting the disadvantaged, immigrant populations who have resided there since the late 1800s.

It was these excluded, displaced people who developed the empty marshland into a widely studied marvel of local enterprise and business activity, whose output is valued at between one million dollars and $2m annually, making it among the globe's biggest unregulated sectors.

Resettlement Issues

Among approximately one million inhabitants living in the dense 2.2 square kilometer area, a minority will be qualified for alternative accommodation in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to accomplish. Others will be relocated to undeveloped zones and salt plains on the distant periphery of Mumbai, potentially divide a historic community. A portion will be denied residences at all.

People eligible to continue living in Dharavi will be allocated flats in multi-story structures, a significant rupture from the organic, shared lifestyle of residing and operating that has sustained this area for generations.

Businesses from tailoring to clay work and recycling are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to a specific "industrial sector" separated from homes.

Survival Challenge

For those such as Shaikh, a leather artisan and long-time of his family to reside in Dharavi, the project presents an existential threat. His makeshift, three-storey facility produces leather coats – tailored coats, luxury coats, decorated jackets – marketed in premium stores in upscale neighborhoods and overseas.

Household members resides in the rooms downstairs and employees and garment workers – workers from north India – also sleep there, enabling him to manage costs. Beyond the slum, Mumbai rents are often tenfold costlier for a single room.

Pressure and Coercion

Within the government offices nearby, a conceptual model of the redevelopment plan shows a very different vision for the future. Slickly dressed inhabitants mill about on two-wheelers and e-vehicles, acquiring international bread and pastries and enlisting beverages on a patio outside a restaurant and Ice-Cream. It is a world away from the affordable idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that maintains Dharavi's community.

"This is not improvement for residents," explains the artisan. "It represents an enormous property transaction that will make it unaffordable for our community to continue."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the business conglomerate. Managed by an influential industrialist – one of India's most powerful and an associate of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of favoritism and questionable practices, which it disputes.

Although administrative bodies calls it a collaborative effort, the business group contributed $950m for its controlling interest. A case stating that the project was questionably assigned to the corporation is pending in India's supreme court.

Sustained Harassment

After they started to publicly resist the project, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of coercion and warning – comprising communications, direct threats and suggestions that criticizing the project was comparable with anti-national sentiment – by people they claim work for the corporate group.

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