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

In November final yr, Adani Realty, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man with an estimated worth of more 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 venture seems to be a win-win scenario. While households that at the moment dwell in dilapidated tenements will get to maneuver into properties in trendy buildings, Adani Realty will get to develop an actual property gold mine within the coronary heart of Mumbai.

Once the prevailing residents are resettled, Adani Realty, which bid slightly greater than $612m to clinch the redevelopment venture, will be capable to develop the freed-up land as residential and business actual property and promote it at market charges. The complete venture 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 residence possession and even rental lodging have gotten prohibitively costly. But not everybody in Dharavi is comfortable in regards to the plans.

“I worry about the impact on our livelihood,” Sharifa Hussain, a 51-year-old potter in Kumbhar Wada, an space of Dharavi identified 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 properties won’t be enough for her household’s wants.

“Our family owns three homes, a small warehouse where we store finished products, and this workshop,” Hussain mentioned, whereas dying diyas, conventional earthen lamps utilized by Hindus throughout prayers.

Hussain’s issues stem from the survey carried out to find out the eligibility of households for brand new properties. When the survey was carried out 14 years in the past, all her sons lived together with her. But regardless that two of her sons have gotten married and moved out since then, they’re thought-about a part of one eligible household.

“We will get only one 300-350sq ft [27 to 32sq metres] home. We should be given a home for each of my three sons. We should also get adequate space on the ground level to dry and store our earthenware,” Hussain mentioned.

The economics of the household enterprise should not very encouraging.

“We spend about 5,000 rupees ($60) on raw materials each month, and our total monthly income from the sale of pottery to wholesale buyers is about 40,000 rupees ($485). But that barely helps us make ends meet, let alone have any kind of 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 is but to get married and nonetheless lives together with his mother and father and grandmother within the household residence.

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

“During the two months in the run-up to Diwali, we end up selling all our diyas, and make as much as 200,000 rupees ($2,428)!”

Afzal Khan, a 37-year-old Mumbai native, can be fearful about his livelihood. He owns 5 warehouses in Dharavi that he rents out for about $2,100 per 30 days.

“They are talking about resettling families and manufacturing units. But what will become of my warehouses? I stand to lose my only source of income,” Khan informed Al Jazeera.

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

“No one from the government has spoken to us,” Jain, 40, informed Al Jazeera. “No one has asked what we want, what we need… I am paying wages to 30 people including 15 women workers. So, if my business suffers, I’m not the only 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 Complex (BKC), which is residence to international consulates, five-star resorts, and the headquarters of multinational firms and banks.

Home to an estimated a million individuals, Dharavi has the best inhabitants density of any neighbourhood in India. The slum can be a thriving nerve centre of enterprise exercise. Dharavi is residence to greater than 12,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) engaged in enterprise equivalent to 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. Over the years, migrant labourers from states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar made the world their residence. Today Dharavi has a various inhabitants of people that communicate over a dozen languages and observe totally different faiths.

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

For many many years after India gained independence from the British in 1947, successive governments routinely demolished slum settlements, leaving residents homeless. But 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 resolution.

“People have been stigmatised as ‘slum dwellers’ for generations, including communities which have lived in Dharavi for over 100 years. If people had been seen as legitimate citizens of Mumbai, they would have been allowed to invest in their own civic infrastructure,” Matias Echanove, a associate 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 issues.

“Dharavi has not been allowed to complete its transformation from slum to neighbourhood,” mentioned Samidha Patil, one other associate at urbz. “We see it as a homegrown neighbourhood, which has an immense potential for improvement. The potential lies within the neighbourhood. Residents of Dharavi need to be supported in their initiatives rather than dismissed.”

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

“Incremental development and planning could and should go hand in hand,” Echanove mentioned.

“Moving everyone into apartment blocks would restrict this development and lead to the destruction of livelihoods and displacements.”

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

“This should have happened at least 20 years ago,” Prabhu informed Al Jazeera. “Many NGOs had conducted surveys of residents. The government should have used that data and started keeping its own legal records of residents. This way we could have avoided delays in determining who is eligible for free homes under the rehabilitation scheme, and the whole process of redevelopment could have started decades ago.”

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. However, the plans drew protests from residents cautious of the scale and high quality of properties being provided within the redevelopment.

Multiple invites to tender have been made through the years however the venture did not take off. Eight corporations from India, the Middle East and South Korea participated in a pre-bid assembly earlier than the newest tender floated on October 1, 2022, in accordance with MoneyControl. After quite a few false begins over the many years, Adani Realty secured the venture with its bid in November 2022.

SVR Srinivas, CEO of the Dharavi Redevelopment Board that’s overseeing the venture on behalf of the state authorities, which holds a 20 % stake within the venture, mentioned the redevelopment will supply quite a lot of housing choices to go well with residents’ wants.

“We are going to first focus on providing homes to project-affected families,” Srinivas, who’s the chief secretary of the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, informed Al Jazeera.

“While free homes will be provided to eligible families, we are also going to offer homes for rent at cost to those who do not meet the cut-off criteria, and give them the option to buy the property on a hire-purchase basis.”

Some of the properties will likely 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 physically adjacent to Dharavi, so people will be relocated in close proximity to their original homes and places of work,” Srinivas mentioned.

This proximity is crucial, in accordance with housing activists.

“In case of many other previous slum rehabilitation projects, people would be resettled in far-flung places and this impacted their livelihood. So, they would just rent out or sell those homes and come back to the same spot and the slum would spring up again,” Prabhu mentioned.

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 carried out a survey of residents in 2009.

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

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

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

“The new homes are in exchange for our existing homes that will be demolished,” Kamailya informed Al Jazeera.

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

“Our self-respect comes from our self-reliance. Our craft is a source of our livelihood, without it, we cannot be atmanirbhar (self-reliant),” he mentioned, utilizing a time period utilized by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a part of his “Self-reliant India” marketing campaign.

For residents equivalent to Sharifa Hussain, bathroom services are one other concern.

“When I came here after marriage, my mother-in-law’s mother-in-law was still alive, and I saw how much she struggled in her old age. So, I insisted on building a toilet and bathroom in our home,” she mentioned. “Will Adani give me my own toilet?”

The metropolis authorities has assured residents that each one new properties will embody bathrooms.

“After all formalities are completed, we will be releasing a master plan for the project,” Srinivas mentioned. “We want the public to see that we are committed to addressing all concerns about the rehabilitation of project-affected people, especially those pertaining to the small businesses and manufacturing units.”

Unlike Sharifa Hussain, most of Dharavi’s residents depend on public bathrooms which can be scattered throughout the slums, as their properties don’t have indoor bathrooms and bogs. Until 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 have been depicted in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, which includes a scene wherein the kid protagonist plunges right into a pit of faecal matter.

Even at this time, numerous journey and tourism corporations are attempting to erase that picture of Dharavi by providing excursions to international guests that showcase how the slum has a thriving financial system and is residence to hard-working, entrepreneurial individuals.

“When I first visited Dharavi in October 2005, people who lived outside Dharavi feared it. Many friends warned me that if I enter Dharavi, I won’t be able to come out,” Krishna Pujari, who runs Reality Tours and Travel, informed Al Jazeera.

“I saw hard-working people who were proud of the fact that they had built a life for themselves with their own talent and perseverance,” he added. “I wanted to showcase that in my tours.”

 Today, Pujari is commonly stopped by individuals in Dharavi desirous to greet him or ask him for assist.

“We have been running youth empowerment and digital literacy programs in Dharavi,” he mentioned. “We also used to run a school, but that had to be shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now focusing on expanding our projects to rural India.”

While Pujari stands to lose revenue from Dharavi’s redevelopment, he’s not fearful.

“I have tours running all across India. The loss of income from Dharavi tours will not impact me much, but the people here stand to lose their livelihood if their concerns surrounding the relocation of their businesses are not addressed,” he mentioned.

Srinivas mentioned the federal government is delicate to the wants of small enterprise homeowners and is contemplating a 5-year exemption from the products and companies tax amongst different incentives to encourage trade.

“Plus, we would like to bring them under a more organised system where they can benefit from better measures to not only grow their businesses but also control pollution,” he mentioned.

Srinivas mentioned he expects the venture’s “master plan” to be launched inside six months of all formalities being accomplished.

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

“Dharavi is centrally located and close to five railway stations, making it highly accessible, said Kamaliya, the potter in Dharavi’s Kumbhar Wada neighbourhood. “It is a sone ki chidiya (golden bird) that everyone wants.”