Debkumar Bhadra
The NITI Aayog’s proposed Great Nicobar Island mega-project has rekindled a familiar argument — development against environment. Yet those binary obscures a more uncomfortable question: what happens to the people caught between both?
The project envisions an international container trans-shipment terminal (ICTT), an international greenfield airport, a township and allied infrastructure on one of India’s most remote islands. Proponents, particularly settlers who have spent generations in these remote islands, see it as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Critics — majority of them mainland-based, articulate and well-networked — warn of ecological damage to the island’s fragile ecosystem. Both sides make valid points. What is however missing is the islander’s own voice, which keeps getting subdued by such well organised, connected narratives.
That omission has historical precedent, and it is worth revisiting before India commits to the project.
The Cost of Good Intentions
For decades, factories like Andaman Timber Industries (ATI) at Bambooflat, Wimco at Haddo, Jayshree Timber Products (JTP) at Bakultala and Kitply at Long Island formed the economic driver of A&N Islands. Workers, transporters, small traders and daily wage earners — thousands of families — depended on them directly or indirectly.
Then came the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in T N Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union of India, which restricted felling of naturally grown trees. The ecological logic was sound. What followed, however, was not. All the four wood based industries, including M/S ATI that were in operation in the islands, were permanently shut leaving those dependent on it jobless. No rehabilitation plan was drawn up. Even retirement dues dragged through administrative delays and court proceedings for years. Several workers died before seeing a rupee of what they were owed. The forests were protected, but the people were forgotten.
Similar is the story with the compensation following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Vast stretches of agricultural land across the islands were permanently submerged due to land subsidence. Families lost homes, farms and livelihoods overnight. When post-tsunami compensation announced, it was tied to surrendering land rights. A condition many found punishing when they were already vulnerable. A small section of affected families declined to accept the offer. Others accepted it out of sheer exhaustion. But the memories of injustice remained etched.
Both episodes reveal the same structural failure: the gap between policy intention and lived consequence.
Beyond Development: The Indo-Pacific Dimension
India’s case for the Great Nicobar project is not manufactured. The recent tensions involving Iran and the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated, how quickly a distant flashpoint can cascade into large scale disruption in shipping and air connectivity, fuel shortages and economic turbulence across continents. Indicating nothing remains local anymore — and few places illustrate that truth more sharply than the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The archipelago sits close to one of the busiest sea trade route passing through the Strait of Malacca. Great Nicobar is positioned to become India’s most consequential strategic asset in the Indo-Pacific. The project, viewed from this angle, is not merely a development initiative. It is a piece of national security architecture.
The case does not rest on strategy alone. The proposed International Container Trans-shipment Terminal, if realised, could position Great Nicobar as a major node in global shipping map — generating substantial revenue for India while opening up employment at a scale the islands have not seen before. For an archipelago where tourism remains the only significant source of livelihood, beyond government service, that prospect is not abstract.
Development That Carries People Along
Great Nicobar itself was settled under a government rehabilitation scheme that brought families comprising refugees, ex-servicemen, settlers from the mainland to establish civilian presence in one of India’s most remote corners. These communities have legitimate stakes in the project’s outcome. So does the indigenous tribes whose forest habitats sit within the project’s ecological footprint. Dismissing either set of concerns is not a development strategy. It is a recipe for the same unresolved grievances that have marked island policy for decades.
If the project moves forward, the lessons of islands wood-based industries and the post-tsunami compensation must be written into its foundations, not treated as cautionary footnotes.
Compensation mechanisms must be legally enforceable, not discretionary. Rehabilitation cannot be a vague assurance. Environmental impact assessments must be transparent and open to public scrutiny — not a mere compliance exercises. And crucially, local communities must be treated as stakeholders, not as populations to be managed around a larger plan.
India’s strategic needs are real. So is the ecological stakes. But the past lesson from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is simpler: governments move on; the people stay and judge the policies not by their intentions, but by what they leave behind.
The workers of M/S ATI and other wood based industries were forgotten. Many of the families who lost their landholdings to the tsunami are still waiting for a closure. There is a deep irony here that policy makers would do well to sit with: the same islands India now wishes to position as its most consequential strategic asset in the Indo-Pacific are the islands whose people have been overlooked by the very policies made in their name. The Great Nicobar project, before it breaks ground, must decide whether it intends to carry that irony forward or finally resolve it. (Note: Views expressed in this column are writer’s own)
