IWN Daily Digest — Sunday, 18 May 2026
At the southernmost tip of India’s territory, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Andaman Sea, lies Great Nicobar Island — one of Asia’s most intact rainforest ecosystems, home to leatherback sea turtles, Nicobar long-tailed macaques, saltwater crocodiles, and two of India’s most vulnerable tribal communities: the Shompen and the Nicobarese.
It is also the site of a proposed ₹81,000-crore infrastructure project. And right now, it is the country’s most charged conservation battleground.
What’s planned
The Great Nicobar Island Project, approved in 2021, proposes a transhipment port at Galathea Bay, an international airport, a township, and a power plant. The government’s case is strategic: the island’s location in the Indo-Pacific is seen as a potential fulcrum for India’s maritime positioning, particularly as China’s presence in the Indian Ocean grows. The Centre maintains that environmental impacts have been comprehensively assessed and managed through “calibrated safeguards”, and that all statutory procedures protecting indigenous communities — including the Forest Rights Act, 2006 — have been followed.
The ecological price
Critics, including conservation scientists and legal experts, say completing the project would require the felling of more than a million trees and the clearance of 130–160 square kilometres of primary rainforest. Galathea Bay, where the port is planned, is one of the world’s most critical leatherback turtle nesting beaches — documented by biologist Satish Bhaskar, who recorded over 800 leatherback nests there in a single season during his landmark 1977–1996 coastal surveys.
The Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, face the prospect of permanent displacement from ancestral forest lands. Consent processes have been challenged: critics point to a gramsabha that less than five per cent of the eligible population attended.
The political flashpoint
The debate sharpened last month when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi visited the island and called the project “one of the biggest scams” and “the gravest crime against the country’s natural and tribal heritage.” Retired military officers pushed back sharply, calling the project essential for India’s strategic posture. The National Green Tribunal is separately examining clearance challenges.
Great Nicobar sits at the intersection of conservation science, tribal rights, national security, and constitutional law. What happens here will define the limits of India’s conservation ambition for a generation.
Sources: The Federal · The Tribune · Carbon Brief
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