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. 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 Navy has greatly increased the strategic importance of the Bay of Bengal in the past two decades, Delhi’s infrastructure push and the building of a strong military deterrence at Great Nicobar hasn’t come a day too late. 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. On Monday, even as the ministry submitted the panel’s report to an NGT bench, there was little indication that a resolution to the impasse was at hand.
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 will do more harm than good, especially because the lack of transparency around due procedures was a major sticking point with civil society activists. The government has reportedly also wielded the RTI Act’s provisions on security and strategic concerns to deny right to information requests about environmental clearances. In March, it used an equally unconvincing argument — the matter is sub judice — to evade a Rajya Sabha question on the red flags raised by the NGT and National Commission for Scheduled Tribes about the project’s impact on local communities. Two months later, Union Minister of Tribal Affairs Jual Oram said that the government was examining the concerns raised by tribal communities, but again refused to divulge details. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited, which is in charge of the infrastructure development activities, claims that its wildlife conservation plan (WCP) is derived from a framework developed by scientists at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology. But the WCP, too, is not in the public domain.
Delhi has taken more than 70 years to recognise the strategic importance of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It now needs to set the record right on transparency — a project of national importance cannot be clouded with misgivings.
