In the past 50 years—and increasingly in the last 10—the word development has assumed a plain and clear meaning. It simply means handing over riverfronts, coasts, farmlands, hills, and forests to mining and real estate mafias for conversion on the one hand into super-profit extraction zones and, on the other, into high-value residences, enclaves, resorts, and tourism sites for the rich. As for the people who live in these areas, they are considered a nuisance who must be moved to shanty towns outside the city and out of sight of tender middle-class and upper-class eyes.
A global version of this strategy was declared a few days ago—staggering in its effrontery—by US President Donald Trump, when he talked of taking over the Gaza Strip and converting it into a Riviera-like beachfront. It’s beautiful land, he said, but the Gazans must leave.
The Great Nicobar Island is being viewed as a similar piece of “beautiful” real estate, which must be developed into a “Macau”, a “Singapore”, even as its trees, creatures, and indigenes must make way for this vision to unfold.
As the scale and speed at which forests are felled and lands are transferred to mining and real estate moguls increases, one must pause and ask just what the government’s understanding of development really is.
The Brundtland Commission’s 1987 report “Our Common Future” defined sustainable development as one “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In other words, sustainability is not some retrogressive madness that denies growth, but simply a way of ensuring that mankind does not destroy the earth or terminate all species but itself in its pursuit of “development”.
As Frontline reported in an earlier cover story (“Mega folly”, January 27, 2023), Great Nicobar and its companion islands are home to pristine forests that go back to the beginnings of time. They house flora and fauna that are rare and endemic. The islands are home to indigenous tribes who were there long before “civilisation” as we define it was born. These are important factors. They must weigh with any government before it launches a plan that threatens to wipe out life on the island as we knew it.
Nationalism is not about brandishing a flag. It is about recognising that the farthest outposts of India deserve the same attention as the richest enclaves of Delhi. That forests, wetlands, bays, and mountains belong to the land, that they cannot be sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder. That “development” is not about size and grandeur and profits alone, but about how well it is integrated with the land and the people.
The upcoming megaproject on Great Nicobar Island fails all three tests of sustainability—social, economic, and ecological. Socially, it will oust indigenous people from their homeland and possibly destroy them. Economically, the viability of the transshipment port is suspect, as the excellent analysis by M. Rajshekhar in this issue shows. And ecologically, it is eminently obvious that the project bodes an environmental catastrophe for the island.
What then is the big plan? Examined from all angles, the project’s pre-eminent motive appears simply to be short-term profits from resource-gouging. There are easy pickings here for builders, contractors, consultants, and loggers. And, of course, the enablers. Regardless of whether a container port or housing colony ever comes up.
Perhaps that is why the government can announce a project worth Rs. 81,000 crore for Great Nicobar while plain vanilla development work—hospitals, water, sanitation—languishes in Port Blair, just 500 kilometres to its north.
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