Pressure, Anxiety and Aspiration as Mumbai Inhabitants Await the Bulldozers

For months, threatening communications recurred. At first, reportedly from an ex-law enforcement official and a retired army general, and then from the authorities. Finally, one resident claims he was summoned to law enforcement headquarters and warned explicitly: stop speaking out or experience severe repercussions.

This third-generation resident is among those resisting a expensive initiative where one of India's largest slums – a massive informal community with rich history – is scheduled to be demolished and transformed by a large business group.

"The culture of this area is exceptional in the globe," explains the resident. "But they want to destroy our community and stop us speaking out."

Opposing Environments

The narrow alleys of Dharavi stand in sharp opposition to the towering buildings and luxury apartments that dominate the settlement. Homes are built haphazardly and typically missing basic amenities, informal businesses release harmful emissions and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

For certain residents, the prospect of Dharavi transformed into a modern district of high-end towers, well-maintained green spaces, modern retail complexes and homes with two toilets is an aspirational dream realized.

"We don't have sufficient health services, roads or sewage systems and we have no places for children to play," says A Selvin Nadar, 56, who moved from southern India in the early eighties. "The single option is to clear the area and provide modern residences."

Community Resistance

However, some, such as the leather artisan, are fighting against the redevelopment.

Everyone acknowledges that Dharavi, consistently overlooked as unauthorized settlement, is in stark need economic input and modernization. However they are concerned that this plan – absent of community input – is one that will convert valuable urban land into a luxury development, forcing out the lower-caste, immigrant populations who have lived there since the nineteenth century.

These were these marginalized, migrant workers who built up the vacant wetlands into a widely studied marvel of self-reliance and economic productivity, whose economic value is valued at between one million dollars and $2m a year, making it among the globe's biggest informal economies.

Displacement Concerns

Of the roughly one million inhabitants living in the packed 220-hectare zone, less than 50% will be eligible for new homes in the project, which is expected to take an extended timeframe to finish. The remainder will be relocated to barren areas and salt plains on the far outskirts of Mumbai, risking fragment a generations-old social network. A portion will receive no housing at all.

People eligible to stay in the area will be provided apartments in high-rise buildings, a substantial change from the evolved, collective approach of dwelling and laboring that has sustained the community for so long.

Industries from clothing production to clay work and recycling are projected to decrease in quantity and be moved to an allocated "commercial zone" far from homes.

Existential Threat

In the case of this protester, a craftsman and multi-generational of his family to call home the slum, the plan presents an existential threat. His makeshift, multi-level facility creates leather coats – sharp blazers, luxury coats, studded bomber jackets – marketed in luxury boutiques in south Mumbai and overseas.

His family lives in the rooms downstairs and laborers and tailors – migrants from different regions – also sleep on-site, enabling him to manage costs. Outside this community, housing costs are typically tenfold as high for basic accommodation.

Pressure and Coercion

In the official facilities close by, an illustrated mock-up of the Dharavi project illustrates a contrasting vision for the future. Well-groomed inhabitants mill about on cycles and eco-friendly transport, acquiring international bread and croissants and having coffee on an outdoor area near a restaurant and treat station. It is a world away from the 20-rupee idli sambar first meal and low-cost tea that sustains the neighborhood.

"This represents no improvement for our community," explains Shaikh. "It's an enormous property transaction that will render it impossible for residents to remain."

Furthermore, there's skepticism of the development company. Run by a powerful tycoon – a leading figure and an associate of the national leader – the conglomerate has encountered allegations of crony capitalism and financial impropriety, which it disputes.

Although local authorities describes it as a partnership, the business group invested $950m for its majority share. A case stating that the initiative was questionably assigned to the developer is pending in the nation's highest judicial body.

Ongoing Pressure

After they started to publicly resist the development, Shaikh and other residents claim they have been experienced a long-running campaign of pressure and threats – comprising phone calls, direct threats and insinuations that opposing the project was comparable with speaking against the country – by individuals they allege work for the business conglomerate.

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