Fractured/Earth

I have spent much of January in Andaman and Nicobar. I was in Port Blair for a week in the beginning of the month — and then in Great Nicobar for about eight days towards the end of the month.

You know the backstory. Great Nicobar is one of the last places on the planet untouched by modernity — see this Scientific American report. I can vouch for this. Just ten days ago, I had stood at Galathea Bay, watching Leatherbacks lay eggs, thinking that this place wouldn’t have looked any different even 500 years ago. This is not romanticism. Given its isolation, the island has hardly any trade links with the world outside — and, at 6000, its population felt as though it was well within the island’s carrying capacity — Great Nicobar felt like a place untouched by modernity.

In other words, just the sort of place where, as our government thinks, a container transhipment port should come up. A lot has been written about the ecological and social costs of this plan. In its response, however, the government has pointed at the port’s capacity to pull in maritime traffic and valuable foreign exchange — apart from geopolitical advantages. These claims, however, have mostly been taken at face value. And so, this report, out today. 

Working on this report — which is pure reportage and not commentary (which is one of my resolutions for this year) — I found the math doesn’t work; that India will have to spend not only rs 81,000 crore on the project but further sums on interest payments and viability gap funding. Strikingly, given the project’s inherent unviability, both GoI and the andaman administration have opted for haste and secrecy as they try to create a fait accompli on the ground.

The question is why. Which in turn is a function of who gains when Great Nicobar is turned into a resource frontier. Which in turn is about logging + construction tenders where firms make money even if the larger project is unviable. I should stop here. This post is getting long. Do read: https://frontline.thehindu.com/environment/great-nicobar-project-campbell-bay-transshipment-terminal-galathea-bay-infrastructure-project/article69159231.ece

PS: This is my third trip to the islands. The first was in 2004, when I met Samir Acharya for the first time. The second was in 2015, when I cycled up the Andaman Trunk Road with Vidya. And now, this is the third, where I got to the Nicobars (well, Campbell Bay anyway) for the first time in my life.

PS: Here is a video of the discussion between Pankaj Sekhsaria and me on the project.