A Mega Infrastructure Project on India’s Great Nicobar Island Spells Devastation

Despite strong opposition from environmentalists and anthropologists, the Indian government is pressing ahead with plans for a $9 billion infrastructure project in Great Nicobar Island, situated at the southern end of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI).

The Great Nicobar Development Plan involves the construction of a container transshipment port, an airport, a township, and a solar and gas-based power plant. The government expects the project to propel the ANI into a major global transshipment hub and tourist destination. The government says it is aimed at “holistic development,” and a video on the project promises to improve the "quality of life for current and future residents of Great Nicobar."

The ANI comprises a chain of 572 islands, of which 325 belong to the Andaman group and 247 to the Nicobar group. These are scattered from north to south in the Bay of Bengal. Around 40 nautical miles away is the Malacca Strait where three Indian Ocean shipping routes from the Cape of Good Hope, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf converge. The ANI’s geostrategic and geoeconomic significance is immense, particularly with China’s presence in the Indian Ocean region growing.

Over the past two decades, India has developed military assets in the ANI, home to its integrated triservices Andaman and Nicobar Command. Great Nicobar Island hosts INS Baaz, India’s southernmost naval air station at Campbell Bay.

A proposed deep draft container transshipment terminal is planned for Great Nicobar Island’s Galathea Bay. The government hopes it will boost India’s trade with Southeast Asia and cut costs for Indian transporters.

However, the Great Nicobar Development Plan has many critics. Some are skeptical about the transshipment terminal drawing traffic when there are several well-established deep-sea transshipment terminals nearby: Singapore, Klang in Malaysia, and Colombo in Sri Lanka. Would the new terminal at Great Nicobar be able to take on these giants?

There is concern too over the fate of Great Nicobar’s environment and ecology. Its rainforests and beaches host endangered and endemic species including the giant leatherback turtle, the Nicobar megapode, the Great Nicobar crake, the Nicobar crab-eating macaque, and saltwater crocodiles. The proposed dredging for the port would destroy coral reefs and marine ecosystems.

Meanwhile, social scientists point to the impact of the projects on the local population. Once the port, township and other projects are completed, an estimated 650,000 people – most of them from the Indian mainland – are expected to swarm the islands, resulting in an 8,000 percent increase in Great Nicobar Island’s population.

Of particular concern in this regard is the fate of Great Nicobar’s historically isolated indigenous communities – the Shompen and the Nicobarese. The Shompen, around 250 in total and classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, are hunter-gatherers, and live deep in Great Nicobar’s forests. They are among the more isolated tribal groups in the world. As for the Nicobarese, who practice farming and fishing, they number around 1,200 people.

Living in the island’s interior, the Shompen escaped the devastation of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The coastal Nicobarese did not. An estimated 10,000 Nicobarese were reportedly killed in that disaster.

With the Indian government promising to make Great Nicobar Island “another Singapore” or “India’s Hong Kong,” another disaster looms for the Shompen and the Nicobarese. Their forests will be cut down; some 800,000 trees are likely to be cut to make way for the existing projects. They will be displaced from their homes. The risk of contact with outsiders will increase. Their numbers will decline. They are in danger of extinction.

Indeed, in a February 2024 letter to India’s President Droupadi Murmu, herself a member of the Santal tribal group in eastern India’s Odisha, 39 experts warned that “simple contact between the Shompen – who have little to no immunity to infectious outside diseases – and those who come from elsewhere, is certain to result in a precipitous population collapse. The mass death of the entire Shompen tribe will ensue.”

According to the experts, the Great Nicobar Development Plan is a “death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.” Their letter warned that “the only way to avoid the obliteration of the Shompen is for the project to be abandoned.”

However, the Indian government is in no mood to listen.

It has pursued methods and processes that are reportedly severely flawed –  and arguably disingenuous – to advance the mega infrastructure project. There are reports of gross violations of due process and of legal and constitutional provisions. Particularly worrying is the exclusion of the island’s original inhabitants from the consultation process.

According to Down to Earth, an Indian news magazine focused on the politics of environment and development, the public hearing process for the draft Social Impact Assessment (SIA) on the Great Nicobar Development Plan was completed without consulting the Shompen and the Nicobarese.

“In fact, the 117-page long draft SIA, undertaken under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, fails to evaluate the impact of the mega infrastructure project on the interests of the original inhabitants and does not refer to the two communities even once,” Down to Earth said.

Worryingly, the government has rejected all requests for information under the Right to Information Act about the Great Nicobar project due to “national security” reasons.

In February 2024, India’s Ministry of Shipping advertised the mega project at Great Nicobar Island as “a lifetime opportunity for investors to reap gold.” It could be for those businessmen close to the government who are likely to be awarded the contracts.

For Great Nicobar Island’s once pristine environment and its original inhabitants, it will spell devastation.