Great Nicobar’s development: Strategic gain or loss of balance?
Summary
Tribal ways of life and a treasure trove of biodiversity are too high a price to pay for Great Nicobar Island’s transformation. Mega projects like this one, with a budget of ₹81,000 crore, mustn’t escape the scrutiny of reason.
The remote, stunningly beautiful and little understood Great Nicobar Island has been the focus of news reports in recent months, two decades after it made headlines when the 2004 tsunami devastated lives and altered its coastline. This time, it’s a man-made wave of development that is drawing attention: specifically, plans under the Great Nicobar Island Development Project, which has an outlay of ₹81,000 crore and was launched in 2021.
Infra work is proceeding apace on a trans-shipment port, an international airport, power plants, tourism facilities and a township where hundreds of thousands of people are expected to settle. The project’s blueprint covers 160-sq-km, including 130-sq-km of tropical rain- forest land that is home to people whose lives are intricately linked to its numerous species of plant and animal life. Environmentalists, climate activists and even novelist Amitav Ghosh have described it as ‘ecocide.’
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India’s biodiversity is like a wondrous quilt of beauty and Great Nicobar is one of our few untouched hot-spots. It holds a range of micro-habitats, from beaches, mangroves and coastal forests to rivers, lagoons and rainforests that host an invaluable variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, crustaceans, amphibians, insects and plants—some found nowhere else in the world.
This treasure trove is at risk. The isle’s Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, one of the few nesting sites for the vulnerable and endemic Nicobar megapode as well as the Giant Leatherback Sea turtle, was de-notified in January 2021 to ease the port’s construction.
Apart from causing irreversible ecological harm, our brick-and-mortar intrusion is likely to devastate traditional lifestyles and ancestral lands. Forest-dwelling and semi-nomadic, the Shompen are a “particularly vulnerable tribal group" of 229 individuals, according to India’s 2011 census. It’s a population small enough to be wiped out by the flu, and, as they are among the world’s last people with almost no contact with the outside world, their immunity may prove unable to withstand an influx of outsiders.
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Great Nicobar is also home of the Nicobarese, a settled tribe that mostly practises horticulture. For decades, India has respected and protected the rights of isolated indigenous people to their land and way of life, with contact made on their terms. Not very long ago, an American social media influencer who tried to film the Sentinelese on North Sentinel Island was arrested. Yet, ‘development’ seems to license much worse.
The archipelago’s strategic value for trade and defence, given its Bay of Bengal location, is undeniable. The isles are within close reach of major Indian and East Asian ports, and could support the Quad’s aim of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
But Great Nicobar isn’t just real estate; it is a fragile ecosystem that’s prone to low-intensity quakes. The 2004 tsunami’s impact is yet to be fully understood, though researchers found that it tilted the archipelago, leaving some dry parts submerged. Is pouring tonnes of concrete and steel into such a sensitive zone a good idea?
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These lands are not just inhabited by folks who deserve the liberty to live how they like, undisturbed if they so choose, they offer us a unique chance to expand the frontiers of knowledge if we go about it delicately.
While the country does need to develop, we must not place the details of our development path beyond the scrutiny of reason. Steamrollers 2,500km away from New Delhi signal a loss of balance. Our geo-strategic aims can be met at far lower cost.
