Andaman LG Frames Great Nicobar Project as Strategic Test, Says Security and Ecology Can Coexist

Andaman and Nicobar Lieutenant Governor D K Joshi has made his case for the Great Nicobar Island Development Project in an opinion column in the Indian Express. The project is a Rs 81,000-92,000 crore plan to turn India's southernmost island into a global maritime and strategic hub. Joshi calls it a strategic test for the country, and says it should not be read as simply an infrastructure scheme.

His argument starts with geography. Nations today, he writes, are judged less by the size of their economies or the strength of their armies than by whether they can read geography, anticipate the future and act before an opportunity becomes a vulnerability. Great Nicobar, in his telling, is one of India's most important strategic windows to the world. The question, he says, is whether India is ready to convert a rare geographical advantage into greater Comprehensive National Power.

Joshi places this in a longer history. For centuries the Indian Ocean shaped India's destiny, carrying its trade, ideas and civilisational influence and, at times, its vulnerabilities. Yet for much of the period after Independence, he writes, India's strategic imagination remained heavily continental. Viewed from the high seas, he argues, the importance of Great Nicobar becomes clearer. He describes the Indian Ocean as an increasingly crowded arena where energy flows, container traffic, naval deployments, island facilities, undersea cables and maritime surveillance are part of a larger contest.

He also points to Thailand. Bangkok has shelved a decades-old proposal for a canal linking the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand. In its place, Joshi writes, a 90 km overland multi-modal land bridge awaits final approval. It would connect two newly designed deep-sea ports along the 10th parallel, one at Ranong on the Andaman Sea and one at Chumphon on the Gulf of Thailand. The plan also includes dual-track high-speed rail, multi-lane roads, oil and gas pipelines and an air-digital grid. Taken together, he says, these developments redefine the Indo-Pacific trade route and shift the economic centre of gravity to the Andaman basin.

Against that backdrop, Joshi says powerful countries across the Indian Ocean region are steadily expanding their presence through ports, logistics arrangements, maritime access facilities, naval assets, surveillance systems and economic corridors. India's answer, he writes, must be strategic consolidation. Sovereignty, in his view, is strengthened when territory is connected, inhabited, serviced, productive and strategically usable. He says the International Container Transshipment Port, the greenfield airport, the township and the power plant would together create the ecosystem India needs for a credible, sustained and multidimensional presence at a decisive maritime location.

The project is politically contested. During a visit to the island in April, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the government of committing a "crime against natural and tribal heritage". The Centre responded on May 1 with a detailed defence of the project that stressed its strategic importance. In February 2026, the National Green Tribunal cleared the project.

Joshi acknowledges that Great Nicobar is environmentally sensitive. Any project of this scale, he writes, must be carried out with ecological care, legal compliance, scientific monitoring and genuine mitigation. But he adds that ecological sensitivity cannot become a permanent veto on strategic thinking. The challenge, as he frames it, is to pursue national security with ecological responsibility.

The column is an opinion piece by the official who administers the islands, not a new policy announcement. What to watch is how the promised safeguards and the concerns over tribal heritage are handled as the project moves into implementation.