Nicobar is too important to get wrong

This article is authored by Debika Dutta, columnist and teacher, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Mangaldai, Assam.

With the Great Nicobar project moving through key clearances and drawing renewed scrutiny, India’s long-standing dependence on foreign trans-shipment hubs has finally forced a strategic rethink. For decades, a country of India’s trade volume has routed nearly three-fourths of its cargo through ports such as Colombo, Singapore and Port Klang, absorbing higher costs and strategic vulnerability in the process. Correcting that imbalance is no longer optional. It is overdue.

Nicobar

The proposed development of Great Nicobar—a trans-shipment port, an international airport and supporting infrastructure—is, at one level, a response to that reality. At another, it is a statement of intent. In an Indo-Pacific where infrastructure increasingly defines influence, India cannot afford to remain a peripheral player.

The numbers make the gap clear. Singapore handles over 35 million TEUs annually; Colombo manages around 7–8 million. India, despite its scale, lacks a comparable trans-shipment hub. The proposed port at Great Nicobar, with a potential capacity exceeding 14 million TEUs, seeks to change that equation. More importantly, it seeks to do so at a location that matters—less than 100 nautical miles from the Malacca Strait, a corridor that carries nearly one-third of global trade. For a country of India’s scale, this gap is no longer tenable.

But strategic logic, however compelling, does not erase ecological reality. And this is where the debate becomes more difficult—and more necessary.

Great Nicobar is not an empty outpost waiting to be developed. It is a biosphere reserve, home to dense tropical forests, fragile coastlines and highly specialised ecosystems. The diversion of over 130 square kilometres of forest land and the felling of hundreds of thousands of trees is not a marginal adjustment. It is a profound alteration of the landscape.

Island ecosystems are unforgiving. They do not absorb disruption the way mainland environments sometimes can. The nesting grounds of the leatherback turtle at Galathea Bay, the coral reefs, the mangroves—these are not assets that can be relocated or recreated elsewhere. Once damaged, they are, for all practical purposes, lost. The question is not whether these risks exist—they do—but whether they justify inaction.

There is also the question of people. The Shompen and Nicobarese communities are not simply residents of the island; they are part of its ecological balance. Their relationship with land is not transactional. It is embedded in culture and continuity. Any development that treats their consent as a procedural requirement rather than a substantive process risks eroding that balance.

These concerns are not arguments against development. They are arguments against complacency.

The government has maintained that the project will proceed with safeguards—phased construction, environmental monitoring and conservation plans. In principle, that is the right approach. Modern infrastructure need not replicate the excesses of the past. With the right systems, it can be both ambitious and restrained.

But the credibility of that claim will depend entirely on execution. India’s experience with large projects offers enough cautionary lessons. Environmental clearances have often been treated as endpoints rather than starting points; safeguards, as checklists rather than commitments.

Great Nicobar cannot afford that approach.

The debate, then, is not between development and conservation. It is between disciplined development and irreversible damage. India’s strategic needs are real, but so are its ecological limits. Ignoring either would be short-sighted.

There is also a cost to inaction that deserves equal attention. Delaying such infrastructure does not preserve a neutral position. It prolongs dependence, defers capability and cedes strategic space in a region that is rapidly evolving. In that sense, hesitation carries its own risks—less visible, but no less consequential.

The way forward lies in raising the standard of execution. Environmental monitoring must be continuous and publicly accessible, not episodic. Independent scientific assessments must inform decisions even mid-course. Tribal safeguards must be enforced in spirit, not merely on paper. And above all, there must be a willingness to recalibrate—slow down, redesign or even pause—if the evidence demands it.

These are not idealistic expectations. They are practical necessities in a landscape where the cost of error is permanent.

Great Nicobar is more than a project. It is a test—of whether India can align ambition with responsibility, strategy with sensitivity. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that growth in the 21st century need not come at the expense of ecological and cultural foundations.

India should go ahead with Great Nicobar. The strategic and economic case is too strong to ignore. But it should do so with a clarity that matches its ambition: That in a place this fragile, intent is not enough—only execution will count.

Build Nicobar, certainly—but build it in a way that proves India can grow without losing what it cannot rebuild.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Debika Dutta, columnist and teacher, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Mangaldai, Assam.