GREAT NICOBAR ISLAND — The Indian government has approved an $11 billion development project on Great Nicobar Island that includes a transhipment port, a civilian-military airport, a power plant, tourism infrastructure, and a township designed for 350,000 people. The project will cover 166.1 square kilometers—about 16 percent of the island—and is situated near the western approaches to the Strait of Malacca, through which a third of global trade and seaborne oil flows.
Great Nicobar Island, India’s southernmost territory, lies closer to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia than to the Indian mainland. The government initially cited maritime trade economics to justify the project but later emphasized its strategic importance in the Indian Ocean region. A May 2026 press release described the initiative as “a strategic project which aims to strengthen India’s presence in the Andaman Sea and Southeast Asia.” It also stated the project “is designed to enhance India’s national security, strategic and defence presence, strengthen the islands’ economic position, and accelerate holistic development in the region.”
Shekhar Sinha, former vice chief of the Indian Navy, supported the project’s strategic rationale, stating, “This island has a strategic value because it is sitting right at the mouth of Malacca [strait]. And if it is [developed as] a commercial setup, no one would be able to object.” He added, “It is a great place to monitor all the traffic, coming in and out of the strait. It would give India an edge in maritime domain awareness.”
Critics, however, warn of severe environmental and human rights consequences. Half of the land designated for the project overlaps with tribal reserve areas inhabited by the Shompen, a seminomadic hunter-gatherer group numbering only a few hundred. In February 2024, 39 genocide experts wrote to Indian President Droupadi Murmu, warning that the project would be “a death sentence for the Shompen,” tantamount to the international crime of genocide. The ancestral lands of the fishing-dependent Nicobarese community, who number a few thousand, have been designated for a tourism zone, and the project would displace them while enabling the settlement of 350,000 new residents—a projected population increase of approximately 4,000 percent.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition, visited the island in May 2026 and wrote on X: “The government calls what it is doing here a ‘Project.’ It is communities that have been ignored while their homes have been snatched away. This is destruction dressed in development’s language.” He also claimed the initiative was “one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against this country’s natural and tribal heritage in our lifetime.” Manish Chandi, former member of the research advisory board of the Andaman and Nicobar Tribal Research and Training Institute, said: “This project is very colonial.”
Inhabitants of Great Nicobar Island have refused to relinquish their lands and have filed legal cases against the government’s plans in multiple courts. India’s environment minister informed Parliament in 2023 that nearly 964,000 trees would be felled for the project. Activists warn the development would severely disrupt one of India’s most biodiverse island ecosystems through large-scale deforestation, coastal alteration, and infrastructure construction.