Dharavi: organising around a threatened redevelopment

Redevelopment planning since 2004; court and eligibility reporting through 2025

Residents organised around an existing community economy. Proposed redevelopment threatened homes, workspaces and local relationships.

The pressure

Pushed out

Only qualifying ground-floor residents who could prove occupation before 2000 were offered free homes inside Dharavi. Others were offered paid or rent-to-own homes outside it; residents without documents risked exclusion. This was not complete exclusion of every undocumented resident or evidence of completed mass removal.

ANI via The Tribune (2 July 2025); Reuters via The Tribune (29 August 2023); The Quint (4 November 2024).

Squeezed out

SPARC and KRVIA documented manufacturing, recycling and an existing informal economy in 2010. Thomson Reuters Foundation described an estimated annual turnover of up to $1 billion in 2016. The 2010 book criticised the 2004 plan, not the later Adani plan.

SPARC and KRVIA, Re-interpreting, Re-imagining, Re-developing Dharavi (2010); Rina Chandran, Thomson Reuters Foundation (12 October 2016).

What people did

  • Thousands marched against the plan on 16 December 2023, with opposition parties and the Dharavi Bachao Andolan.
  • The Dharavi Bachao Andolan demanded homes inside Dharavi for eligible and ineligible residents alike and 500 sq ft units.

What held

Organising continued, but the project proceeded. Tenders in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2016 and 2018 did not lead to delivery; the sources did not establish that organising caused those failures. Adani won a new tender in November 2022. The Bombay High Court upheld the award on 20 December 2024; the Supreme Court declined to halt work on 7 March 2025 while a rival bidder's appeal was heard. The litigation was not established as concluded.

What didn't

The account did not establish that organising had resolved redevelopment uncertainty or the imbalance in negotiating power.

What you can borrow

Sources

Sources: Land Conflict Watch (2024, updated 2025), News On AIR (20 December 2024), The Tribune (7 March and 2 July 2025), Reuters (29 August 2023), SPARC/KRVIA (2010), Thomson Reuters Foundation (2016) and JURIST (17 December 2023). Threatened harms are not presented as completed mass demolition. Unidentified PROUD and SRA reports are not relied on.