Stress mounts on Indian authorities over “genocidal” Nice Nicobar mega-project

Shompen band traversing a river on Nice Nicobar Island.

Calls are rising for the Indian authorities to scrap its controversial Nice Nicobar undertaking after it suffered a collection of setbacks in current weeks.

They embody:

• The Tribal Affairs Ministry has demanded solutions from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ authorities after it emerged that that they had wrongly claimed the undertaking had the consent of the Indigenous peoples of the islands, whose lands are set to be devastated by it. This has been confirmed by the Nice Nicobar Tribal Council.

• The primary opposition get together, the Indian Nationwide Congress, has come out strongly towards the undertaking, with each Opposition Chief Rahul Gandhi and Congress Parliamentary Chair Sonia Gandhi elevating severe issues about its influence on the principally uncontacted Shompen and the Nicobarese peoples.

• The estimated price of the undertaking has risen dramatically – the most recent authorities estimates say it’s going to now price greater than US $10 billion, in comparison with the 2020 determine of simply over $1 billion.

• A collection of earthquakes within the area have underlined the warnings of seismologists and geologists that constructing an enormous infrastructure undertaking in one of many world’s most lively seismic zones is a recipe for catastrophe.

• Final yr 39 worldwide genocide consultants wrote to the Indian President, describing the mega-project as a “loss of life sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the worldwide crime of genocide”. They referred to as for the scheme to be instantly deserted.

Survival Worldwide’s Director Caroline Pearce mentioned right now: “With each passing week it’s turning into clearer that this undertaking is a catastrophe ready to occur – from each perspective. It’s a scandalous violation of worldwide human rights legislation; it is going to be disastrous for the Shompen and Nicobarese individuals whose lives are at stake and whose livelihoods will likely be destroyed; its price ticket is now astronomical; and all of it stands each probability of coming crashing down when the following main earthquake strikes, because it inevitably will. The federal government should now abide by its personal legal guidelines and scrap this ill-conceived undertaking.”

Editors’ word:

The Indian authorities plans to remodel Nice Nicobar Island into the ‘Hong Kong of India’. The Nice Nicobar undertaking entails the creation of a mega-port; a metropolis; a world airport; an influence station; a navy base; an industrial park; and tourism zones, unfold over greater than 244 sq. km of land, together with 130 sq. km of rainforest.
Consultants estimate that 10 million timber will likely be destroyed within the mega undertaking’s creation.
The federal government claims it’s going to offset the rainforest loss by planting timber within the scrublands of North India. Crocodiles and 1000’s of coral colonies could be translocated to different components of the island.
The mega-project will take up round a 3rd of the island – half of it inside the official Tribal Reserve.
The undertaking would create a large inhabitants explosion. At present an estimated 8,000 individuals dwell there. The federal government plans to settle as much as 650,000 individuals beneath the scheme, a inhabitants the dimensions of Las Vegas. Along with the inherent issues of a sudden inhabitants rise, it will drastically improve the Shompen’s publicity to exterior illnesses for which they don’t have any immunity, and which might wipe them out.
The federal government plans to encourage 1 million vacationers and others to go to the island yearly.

For extra data on the Nice Nicobar undertaking and its results on the Shompen and Nicobarese, see Survival’s 2025 report.