Killing the Great Nicobar

“To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition.” I’m quoting Arundhati Roy’s 1999 essay The Greater Common Good. She was writing about the disastrous impact of big dams on nations.

Big dams are weapons of mass destruction, she wrote. They help a government demonstrate its absolute command over people’s destiny. “You (the Government) make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers, who doesn’t. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it. How easily you could press a button and annihilate the earth. How you can start a war or sue for peace. How you can snatch a river away from one and gift it to another. How you can … fell a forest…. You use caprice to fracture a people’s faith in ancient things – earth, forest, water, air.”

Roy wrote that years before Donald Trump started a war for no reason in Iran and Narendra Modi decided to clear 130 sq km of tropical rainforest, mangroves, coral ecosystems, and rare biodiversity in Great Nicobar.

Modi has been bringing “development” to India ever since he ascended the throne in Indraprastha. The latest ‘development’ is the mega project in Great Nicobar Island. This island’s pristine natural wealth, one of India’s last great ecological sanctuaries, will be destroyed entirely to make way for a seaport, airport, township, and “strategic growth.”

If you’re not wealthy enough to live, move, and have your being in airconditioned rooms, you must be experiencing the unbearable heat in the air these days. The summer is yet to come, but we are already on fire. Gifted by Development.

Do we need more of this Development?

Great Nicobar is not an empty stretch of land waiting for concrete. It is a living world. Dense tropical rainforests breathe there with ancient patience. Mangroves protect fragile coasts. Coral reefs pulse with marine life. Rare creatures move through its forests and shores, often unnoticed by those who draw lines on maps sitting in distant airconditioned offices.

To clear vast stretches of forest in such a place is not merely to remove trees. It is to unravel relationships built over centuries. Forests are communities. Birds nest in them. Insects pollinate within them. Soil organisms enrich them. Rain cycles depend on them. When a rainforest falls, what disappears is not timber alone, but an entire life-sustaining system of nature.

Great Nicobar is home to endangered species whose survival already hangs in balance. Leatherback turtles nest on its beaches. Endemic animals found nowhere else depend on its habitat. Once their breeding grounds are disturbed, no amount of official compensation can recreate what is lost. You can plant saplings elsewhere, but you cannot instantly grow an ancient ecosystem.

Then there is the sea. Coastal construction, dredging, shipping traffic, and urban expansion threaten marine ecosystems already stressed by climate change. Coral reefs do not negotiate with bulldozers. Mangroves cannot be relocated like furniture. When coastlines are damaged, the sea remembers. That memory will return one day with unbearable fury.

Great Nicobar lies in a region marked by seismic vulnerability and the memory of the 2004 tsunami. To build massive infrastructure in such a landscape demands not only engineering confidence but ecological humility. Nature has already shown that islands are not easily conquered.

I’m not an anti-progress Luddite or reactionary. I acknowledge that nations must plan for trade, security, and growth. But development that destroys the very foundations of ecological stability is a contradiction. Progress that leaves behind poisoned waters, displaced wildlife, and broken habitats is not progress; it is deferred disaster.

Forests are not obstacles. They are inheritances that require careful nurturing. Value does not lie only in cargo capacity and real estate, but also in biodiversity, climate resilience, and nature’s beauty.

Great Nicobar begs India to decide what kind of civilisation it wishes to be. One that treats nature as expendable, or one that understands that the wealth of a nation includes its forests.

India now stands at a juncture when it must choose between ‘development’ and wisdom, between spectacle and stewardship. Some losses arrive with applause and ribbon-cuttings. Only later do we hear the silence where birds once sang.

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