ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to bring out the endangered conditions of the erstwhile mill workers and other migrant workers who live in the working-class chawls (vernacular housing typology in Mumbai) and slums in the textile mill areas of Mumbai—their everyday struggles and resilience to the threat of gentrification. The chapter argues that when gentrification is at their doorstep, seeping into their everyday life through the various processes of redevelopment of the textile mill lands, chawls, and slums, leading to economic disparity, social exclusions, and large-scale informality, there is a counter force that gets produced in the city space from below. Using different tactics and coping methods, the working class of the city make themselves more resilient. Chawls, the houses of the working class people, historically had their origin during the mid-19th century when the economy of Bombay shifted from trading to manufacturing industries. They came up with the urban economy, colonial planning policies, and urban housing policies in the city. The landlords and the farmers during the colonial period started selling their land in pieces for the migrants to live in and chawls or chaal as termed locally started coming up in the city. Chawls are a linear horizontal structure similar to the barracks of the British Cantonment area. A chawl is not more than two to three storeys, often looks like a honeycomb structure where the rooms are either back to back with corridor on either sides or are arranged in a linear fashion facing each other with a long dark corridor in the middle (Adarkar 2011).
