Mumbai, India – Dharavi, the notorious slum depicted within the 2008 Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, is about for an costly makeover.

In November final 12 months, Adani Realty, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man with an estimated value of greater than $130bn, received a bid to redevelop the Mumbai shantytown, whose blue tarpaulin-lined huts and shanties are the primary glimpse of India that many worldwide guests get when arriving by aircraft.

On the floor, the mission seems to be a win-win state of affairs. Whereas households that at the moment reside in dilapidated tenements will get to maneuver into houses in fashionable buildings, Adani Realty will get to develop an actual property gold mine within the coronary heart of Mumbai.

As soon as the present residents are resettled, Adani Realty, which bid a bit of greater than $612m to clinch the redevelopment mission, will be capable to develop the freed-up land as residential and business actual property and promote it at market charges. All the mission is estimated to be value as much as $2.4bn.

Many Mumbai residents hope {that a} new inflow of actual property will assist stabilise the housing market in a metropolis the place house possession and even rental lodging have gotten prohibitively costly. However not everybody in Dharavi is blissful in regards to the plans.

“I fear in regards to the influence on our livelihood,” Sharifa Hussain, a 51-year-old potter in Kumbhar Wada, an space of Dharavi recognized for its earthenware companies, informed Al Jazeera.

Hussain, whose household migrated from the western state of Gujarat greater than 70 years in the past, fears that the brand new houses won’t be ample for her household’s wants.

“Our household owns three houses, a small warehouse the place we retailer completed merchandise, and this workshop,” Hussain stated, whereas dying diyas, conventional earthen lamps utilized by Hindus throughout prayers.

Hussain’s considerations stem from the survey carried out to find out the eligibility of households for brand spanking new houses. When the survey was performed 14 years in the past, all her sons lived along with her. However although two of her sons have gotten married and moved out since then, they’re thought of a part of one eligible household.

“We are going to get just one 300-350sq ft [27 to 32sq metres] house. We must be given a house for every of my three sons. We also needs to get ample house on the bottom stage to dry and retailer our earthenware,” Hussain stated.

The economics of the household enterprise will not be very encouraging.

“We spend about 5,000 rupees ($60) on uncooked supplies every month, and our complete month-to-month earnings from the sale of pottery to wholesale consumers is about 40,000 rupees ($485). However that hardly helps us make ends meet, not to mention have any type of financial savings,” Imran, Sharifa Hussain’s youngest son, informed Al Jazeera whereas inspecting a brand new batch of matkis, small earthen pots, which have simply come out of the kiln.

 Imran Hussain, 25, joined the household enterprise after finishing 10 years of education. He’s but to get married and nonetheless lives along with his mother and father and grandmother within the household house.

Whereas enterprise will be robust, his face lights up when he speaks of Diwali, the Hindu competition of lights.

“Throughout the two months within the run-up to Diwali, we find yourself promoting all our diyas, and make as a lot as 200,000 rupees ($2,428)!”

Afzal Khan, a 37-year-old Mumbai native, can also be fearful about his livelihood. He owns 5 warehouses in Dharavi that he rents out for about $2,100 monthly.

“They’re speaking about resettling households and manufacturing models. However what’s going to turn into of my warehouses? I stand to lose my solely supply of earnings,” Khan informed Al Jazeera.

Jayesh Jain, who runs a plastic recycling enterprise in Dharavi that processes about two tonnes of refuse every day, stated the authorities have did not seek the advice of with native residents and companies in regards to the redevelopment plans.

“Nobody from the federal government has spoken to us,” Jain, 40, informed Al Jazeera. “Nobody has requested what we wish, what we’d like… I’m paying wages to 30 folks together with 15 ladies staff. So, if my enterprise suffers, I’m not the one one affected by it.”

Dharavi covers roughly 2.6sq kilometres (one sq. mile) in central Mumbai, nestled between the worldwide airport and the rich district of Bandra Kurla Advanced (BKC), which is house to international consulates, five-star lodges, and the headquarters of multinational companies and banks.

Dwelling to an estimated a million folks, Dharavi has the very best inhabitants density of any neighbourhood in India. The slum can also be a thriving nerve centre of enterprise exercise. Dharavi is house to greater than 12,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) engaged in enterprise reminiscent of garment making, pottery and recycling.

When the British cleared factories out of the southern a part of Mumbai within the early twentieth century, staff and low-income households moved to Dharavi and lived alongside the native fishers. Through the years, migrant labourers from states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar made the world their house. At this time Dharavi has a various inhabitants of people that converse over a dozen languages and observe totally different faiths.

Dharavi’s residents reside cheek-by-jowl, typically in makeshift, two or three-storied buildings put collectively utilizing corrugated metallic sheets, picket planks, and different scrap supplies. The buildings had been all constructed with out permits and residents have been struggling to get authorized recognition for many years.

For a lot of many years after India gained independence from the British in 1947, successive governments routinely demolished slum settlements, leaving residents homeless. However with many residents having nowhere else to go, shanty cities quickly popped up once more. Over time, residents joined arms with union leaders and housing rights activists to demand a extra compassionate and sustainable answer.

“Individuals have been stigmatised as ‘slum dwellers’ for generations, together with communities which have lived in Dharavi for over 100 years. If folks had been seen as authentic residents of Mumbai, they might have been allowed to spend money on their very own civic infrastructure,” Matias Echanove, a companion at urbz, a analysis collective that specialises in participatory planning and design, informed Al Jazeera.

Urbz, which was based in 2008, has an workplace in Dharavi itself and has been working carefully with its residents to deal with their considerations.

“Dharavi has not been allowed to finish its transformation from slum to neighbourhood,” stated Samidha Patil, one other companion at urbz. “We see it as a homegrown neighbourhood, which has an immense potential for enchancment. The potential lies inside the neighbourhood. Residents of Dharavi must be supported of their initiatives fairly than dismissed.”

Echanove stated the residents of Dharavi have been investing of their houses and companies for years and must be allowed to maintain doing so.

“Incremental improvement and planning may and will go hand in hand,” Echanove stated.

“Shifting everybody into condo blocks would prohibit this improvement and result in the destruction of livelihoods and displacements.”

Ramesh Prabhu, a housing rights activist in Mumbai, stated the redevelopment of Dharavi is lengthy overdue after years of “bureaucratic delays and vote-bank politics”.

“This could have occurred a minimum of 20 years in the past,” Prabhu informed Al Jazeera. “Many NGOs had performed surveys of residents. The federal government ought to have used that knowledge and began preserving its personal authorized data of residents. This manner we may have prevented delays in figuring out who’s eligible without spending a dime houses underneath the rehabilitation scheme, and the entire technique of redevelopment may have began many years in the past.”

Dharavi’s future solely started to obtain critical consideration following the institution of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in 1995.

In 2003, the Maharashtra state authorities determined to redevelop Dharavi as an built-in township. Nevertheless, the plans drew protests from residents cautious of the dimensions and high quality of houses being supplied within the redevelopment.

A number of invites to tender had been made over time however the mission did not take off. Eight firms from India, the Center East and South Korea participated in a pre-bid assembly earlier than the newest tender floated on October 1, 2022, in response to MoneyControl. After quite a few false begins over the many years, Adani Realty secured the mission with its bid in November 2022.

SVR Srinivas, CEO of the Dharavi Redevelopment Board that’s overseeing the mission on behalf of the state authorities, which holds a 20 % stake within the mission, stated the redevelopment will provide quite a lot of housing choices to swimsuit residents’ wants.

“We’re going to first concentrate on offering houses to project-affected households,” Srinivas, who’s the chief secretary of the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Growth Authority, informed Al Jazeera.

“Whereas free houses will probably be offered to eligible households, we’re additionally going to supply houses for lease at value to those that don’t meet the cut-off standards, and provides them the choice to purchase the property on a hire-purchase foundation.”

A number of the houses will probably be constructed on a 19-hectare (47.5-acre) plot of land exterior Dharavi that was acquired from the railways.

“This plot of land is bodily adjoining to Dharavi, so folks will probably be relocated in shut proximity to their authentic houses and locations of labor,” Srinivas stated.

This proximity is important, in response to housing activists.

“In case of many different earlier slum rehabilitation initiatives, folks can be resettled in far-flung locations and this impacted their livelihood. So, they might simply lease out or promote these houses and are available again to the identical spot and the slum would spring up once more,” Prabhu stated.

Eligible households are those that can show that they’ve been residents since earlier than the deadline of January 1, 2000. There have been roughly 58,000 such households when the federal government final performed a survey of residents in 2009.

However the precise variety of households, together with those that are ineligible, is estimated at the moment to be nearer to 100,000. Many are households like Sharifa’s which have grownup youngsters who moved out of the household house within the time because the survey was performed.

A spokesman for Adani Realty stated he couldn’t touch upon the mission till the corporate had acquired a letter of intent from the federal government.

Again within the Dharavi neighbourhood of Kumbhar Wada, Dhansukh Kamailya, a potter from Gujarat state, is cautious of the “narrative of ‘free housing’.”

“The brand new houses are in trade for our current houses that will probably be demolished,” Kamailya informed Al Jazeera.

Kamaliya, whose household enterprise has been in operation for greater than 90 years, stated potters are a proud lot.

“Our self-respect comes from our self-reliance. Our craft is a supply of our livelihood, with out it, we can’t be atmanirbhar (self-reliant),” he stated, utilizing a time period utilized by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a part of his “Self-reliant India” marketing campaign.

For residents reminiscent of Sharifa Hussain, rest room services are one other concern.

“Once I got here right here after marriage, my mother-in-law’s mother-in-law was nonetheless alive, and I noticed how a lot she struggled in her previous age. So, I insisted on constructing a bathroom and toilet in our house,” she stated. “Will Adani give me my very own rest room?”

Town authorities has assured residents that every one new houses will embody bogs.

“In any case formalities are accomplished, we will probably be releasing a grasp plan for the mission,” Srinivas stated. “We would like the general public to see that we’re dedicated to addressing all considerations in regards to the rehabilitation of project-affected folks, particularly these pertaining to the small companies and manufacturing models.”

Not like Sharifa Hussain, most of Dharavi’s residents depend on public bogs which are scattered throughout the slums, as their houses don’t have indoor bogs and loos. Till a couple of decade in the past, some residents would nonetheless relieve themselves alongside railway tracks early within the morning. Some nonetheless really feel deeply ashamed about how their struggles had been depicted in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, which incorporates a scene by which the kid protagonist plunges right into a pit of faecal matter.

Even at the moment, quite a few journey and tourism firms are attempting to erase that picture of Dharavi by providing excursions to international guests that showcase how the slum has a thriving economic system and is house to hard-working, entrepreneurial folks.

“Once I first visited Dharavi in October 2005, individuals who lived exterior Dharavi feared it. Many buddies warned me that if I enter Dharavi, I received’t be capable to come out,” Krishna Pujari, who runs Actuality Excursions and Journey, informed Al Jazeera.

“I noticed hard-working individuals who had been happy with the truth that that they had constructed a life for themselves with their very own expertise and perseverance,” he added. “I wished to showcase that in my excursions.”

 At this time, Pujari is commonly stopped by folks in Dharavi eager to greet him or ask him for assist.

“We’ve been operating youth empowerment and digital literacy packages in Dharavi,” he stated. “We additionally used to run a faculty, however that needed to be shut down in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are actually specializing in increasing our initiatives to rural India.”

Whereas Pujari stands to lose earnings from Dharavi’s redevelopment, he’s not fearful.

“I’ve excursions operating all throughout India. The lack of earnings from Dharavi excursions won’t influence me a lot, however the folks right here stand to lose their livelihood if their considerations surrounding the relocation of their companies will not be addressed,” he stated.

Srinivas stated the federal government is delicate to the wants of small enterprise house owners and is contemplating a 5-year exemption from the products and providers tax amongst different incentives to encourage business.

“Plus, we want to carry them underneath a extra organised system the place they’ll profit from higher measures to not solely develop their companies but additionally management air pollution,” he stated.

Srinivas stated he expects the mission’s “grasp plan” to be launched inside six months of all formalities being accomplished.

Till extra particulars are made public, anxiousness about the way forward for Dharavi is all however sure to persist amongst its residents.

“Dharavi is centrally positioned and shut to 5 railway stations, making it extremely accessible, stated Kamaliya, the potter in Dharavi’s Kumbhar Wada neighbourhood. “It’s a sone ki chidiya (golden hen) that everybody desires.”