Intimidation, Anxiety and Aspiration as Mumbai Inhabitants Confront the Bulldozers

Across several weeks, coercive phone calls persisted. Originally, reportedly from a former police officer and a former defense officer, subsequently from the police themselves. Ultimately, one resident asserts he was summoned to the local precinct and warned explicitly: remain silent or face serious consequences.

This third-generation resident is among those fighting a high-value project where Dharavi – an iconic Mumbai neighborhood – will be bulldozed and redeveloped by a multinational conglomerate.

"The culture of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the planet," explains the resident. "Yet their intention is to eradicate our social fabric and silence our voices."

Dual Worlds

The narrow alleys of the slum present a dramatic difference to the high-rise structures and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Dwellings are assembled randomly and typically lacking adequate facilities, unregulated industries release harmful emissions and the atmosphere is permeated by the suffocating smell of uncovered waste channels.

Among some individuals, the promise of the slum's redevelopment into a glistening neighborhood of premium apartments, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and apartments with multiple bathrooms is an optimistic future realized.

"There's no proper healthcare, proper streets or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," states a chai seller, fifty-six, who relocated from southern India in the early eighties. "The sole solution is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

Resident Opposition

However, some, including the leather artisan, are resisting the project.

None deny that this community, historically ignored as informal housing, is desperately requiring investment and development. Yet they are concerned that this initiative – without resident participation – is one that will turn valuable urban land into a playground for the rich, evicting the marginalized, migrant communities who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

This involved these excluded, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of community resilience and business activity, whose output is estimated at between $1m and a substantial sum annually, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Relocation Worries

Among approximately one million people living in the dense 220-hectare area, less than 50% will be able for alternative accommodation in the redevelopment, which is expected to take a significant period to finish. Additional residents will be relocated to wastelands and coastal regions on the distant periphery of Mumbai, threatening to break up a generations-old community. Certain individuals will be denied residences at all.

Those allowed to remain in the area will be allocated apartments in multi-story structures, a major break from the natural, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has maintained this area for generations.

Commercial activities from tailoring to ceramic crafts and material recovery are expected to reduce in scale and be moved to a designated "industrial sector" separated from people's residences.

Existential Threat

For residents like this protester, a workshop owner and multi-generational inhabitant to reside in Dharavi, the plan presents an existential threat. His rickety, three-floor facility creates leather coats – formal jackets, suede trenches, studded bomber jackets – sold in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and abroad.

His family resides in the rooms downstairs and employees and garment workers – workers from other states – also sleep there, enabling him to afford their labour. Outside the slum, Mumbai rents are typically 10 times costlier for a single room.

Threats and Warning

At the government offices nearby, a conceptual model of the Dharavi project shows a contrasting perspective. Fashionable inhabitants mill about on two-wheelers and electric vehicles, acquiring western-style bread and breakfast items and enlisting beverages on a patio near a coffee shop and treat station. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar morning meal and low-cost tea that supports local residents.

"This represents no progress for residents," says the protester. "It represents a massive property transaction that will price people out for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's distrust of the business conglomerate. Headed by an influential industrialist – a leading figure and an associate of the Indian prime minister – the corporation has faced accusations of preferential treatment and financial impropriety, which it denies.

Although the state government labels it a partnership, the developer paid a significant amount for its controlling interest. Legal proceedings claiming that the project was improperly granted to the corporation is pending in India's supreme court.

Ongoing Pressure

Since they began to vocally oppose the project, protesters and community members assert they have been subjected to a long-running campaign of harassment and intimidation – including communications, direct threats and implications that speaking against the initiative was comparable with speaking against the country – by figures they allege work for the developer.

Included in these suspected of delivering warnings is {a retired police officer|a former law enforcement official|an ex-c