Watch: The Great Nicobar Project: Millions of trees, and tribes at risk

The Indian government is fast moving ahead with the Rs 92,000 crore International Container Transshipment Port project in Andaman and Nicobar’s Galathea Bay. But little heed is being paid to the indigenous communities that have lived in the islands for generations, nor are the environmental concerns adequately addressed, experts tell TNM’s video journalist Bhuvan Malik in an extensive documentary, “When home becomes a project”. 

Galathea Bay is located in India’s southernmost island, Great Nicobar, which is home to a pristine rainforest that has been declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO. The centuries-old forests and the coast house the giant leatherback turtle, macaques, megapodes, and two of India’s most vulnerable Indigenous tribes, the Shompen and the Nicobarese. 

The ecosystem now faces massive destruction with the setting up of a transshipment port, an international airport adjacent to the transshipment port, a sprawling township expected to accommodate three and a half lakh settlers, and a fuel-based power plant to run it all.

The project will replace more than six square kilometres of untouched tropical evergreen and littoral forest. Experts warn that most of the ecological wealth of the islands have been barely studied and remain largely unknown till date.

Conservative estimates say that the project will require the felling of six to 12 million trees. Yet, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change insists that only fewer than 10 lakh trees will be lost to the project. 

Moreover, villages of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes will be absorbed into the project area, essentially displacing them and putting them in the danger of becoming pavement dwellers. 

The patterns are not new to the island dwellers, but a mere repetition of history. The Great Andamanese, another indigenous tribe native to the islands, are on the verge of extinction, thanks to previous attempts by the Indian State to bring ‘development’. The Shompen and Nicobarese fear that a similar fate awaits them. 

Anthropologists say that State interventions in the Andaman and Nicobar islands have never focussed on understanding their way of life, and have always looked down on indigenous knowledge systems. ‘Development’ for the State has meant imposing ‘acceptable’ practices, at the cost of destroying centuries-old cultures and languages. 

Anthropologists and environmentalists say that government after government has only seen the indigenous inhabitants as ‘props’ in the political game, reducing them to photo-ops that tell stories far removed from ground realities. 

Watch this TNM film on the Andaman and Nicobar islands to understand how development that doesn’t account for the environment and the people is being insisted on with little political power or influence.