The Great Nicobar Project

At the southern tip of the Andaman and Nicobar chain, the government is pushing one of India's most contested mega-projects: a wholesale remaking of Great Nicobar Island around a deep-water transhipment port, a greenfield international airport, a new township and a gas-and-solar power plant. Backers frame it as a strategic play - a chance to seize traffic on the busy east-west shipping lane near the Malacca approaches and cut India's reliance on Colombo and Singapore. Critics see an ecological and human gamble on an island that shelters leatherback turtles, dense rainforest and two vulnerable indigenous peoples, the Shompen and the Nicobarese. In February 2026 the National Green Tribunal let the clearance stand, even as forest-rights disputes over tribal consent kept the fight alive.