Why Adani’s Dharavi redevelopment plan has run into resistance from some residents

Twenty years ago, Nafees Khan travelled 1,500 km from home in search of a job.

He found one in Mumbai’s Dharavi, the slum that is home to a large number of small manufacturing and processing units.

Today, Khan earns Rs 20,000 a month at a workshop that manufactures grinding machines. He sends most of his income back home to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh. The workshop is also his shelter for the night.

Like Khan, thousands of migrant workers have made India’s largest slum their home over several decades.

But as the long-planned redevelopment of Dharavi picks up momentum, Khan’s future – and that of workers like him, who neither have ownership rights nor are tenants – looks uncertain.

Khan’s employer and owner of the unit, Shehzad Baig, said it is not just his workers who are worried about the redevelopment project. He is too.

“We don’t know if we will get a space to continue manufacturing or if we will be moved out,” Baig said. “Where will my workers sleep? They can’t afford rent.”

Baig’s workshop is in a section known as Tera Compound, a cluster of 13 parallel lanes in northwest Dharavi, into which are packed about 2,000 industrial and commercial units. Some handle scrap, some recycle plastic and automobile parts, others manufacture garments,...

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