Andaman and Nicobar Islands: Developing Strategic Infrastructure
Asia News Agency
In the past five years, the government has taken steps to develop the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a bulwark of security to the east of the country’s peninsular area and as a crucial node for safeguarding India’s interests in the Indo-Pacific. It has taken more than 70 years to recognise the strategic importance of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The project
The project involves revamping airfields and jetties and building logistics and storage facilities, a base for military personnel, and a robust surveillance infrastructure. It also involves a massive infrastructure upgrade on Great Nicobar Island — an International Container Transshipment Terminal, a greenfield international airport, a township, and a gas and solar-based power plant spread.
Given that the rapid enhancement of the capabilities of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the Indian Navy has greatly increased the strategic importance of the Bay of Bengal in the past two decades. The government’s infrastructure push and the building of a strong military deterrence at Great Nicobar thus, “hasn’t come a day too late,” writes The Indian Express.
Ecological sensitivity
However, “the island’s ecological sensitivity has made the challenge more complex. Civil society activists and wildlife conservationists have alleged that the infrastructure upgrade will harm the region’s indigenous communities, including the largely uncontacted Shompen people, it will have negative spinoffs for coral reefs and marine systems and pose a threat to endangered species, including the terrestrial Nicobar megapode bird and leatherback turtles. In 2023, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directed the Ministry of Environment to constitute a high-powered committee (HPC) to revisit the environmental clearances to the Great Nicobar project.”
The HPC has reportedly concluded that the environmental clearances accorded to the project ‘adhered to statutory provisions’. The government has, however, not made the panel’s report public. Keeping information classified is, of course, necessary at times in matters involving strategic affairs. But in an ecologically fragile region with a vulnerable local population, a project to create a formidable maritime bastion requires engagement with all sections of society. The government’s insistence on secrecy, writes The Indian Express, “will do more harm than good, especially because the lack of transparency around due procedures was a major sticking point with civil society activists….”
