Beyond Outrage: Rethinking Great Nicobar

A Call for Consistent Focus

- Gajanan Khergamker

The article by Gajanan Khergamker examines the debate around the Great Nicobar development project, suggesting that much of the public reaction has been short-lived and surface-level.

While acknowledging legitimate concerns about environmental impact and tribal rights, it stresses the need for consistent, long-term attention rather than episodic outrage. The piece highlights the importance of balancing development with ecological protection and social responsibility, arguing that meaningful progress depends on careful oversight, scientific evaluation and transparent decision-making rather than momentary public attention. A famous politician's visit to Great Nicobar in April 2026 was framed as a moral intervention against ecological destruction and tribal displacement. Standing amid the dense tropical landscape of Campbell Bay, he described the proposed infrastructure project on the island as among the gravest assaults on India’s natural and indigenous heritage. The political timing of the visit, however, carried its own unmistakable significance. The outrage that followed travelled through the predictable circuitry of digital activism with extraordinary speed. Social media accounts that had displayed little prior engagement with the geography, ecology or strategic significance of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago suddenly discovered a deeply performative environmental conscience.

The Great Nicobar Island Development Project is neither a small undertaking nor an uncomplicated one. Spread across more than 166 square kilometres, it involves the construction of a transhipment port, an international airport, a township and associated power infrastructure. The scale of forest diversion involved has triggered concern among environmentalists, scientists, and tribal rights advocates. Those concerns deserve rigorous attention because projects of this scale alter ecological systems permanently and reshape demographic realities for generations.