Fiction of consent in Great Nicobar

The problem with the Great Nicobar Island Development Project (GNIDP) is no longer missing information but wilful disregard. Evidence that unsettles the project is set aside, processes that inconvenience it are compressed, and planning itself now appears to follow decisions already taken.

The draft ‘Comprehensive Tribal Welfare Plan’, circulated for consultation on March 13, is a flawed proposal riddled with contradictions, vague assurances, inadequate clarity on critical processes, and fundamental legal and practical flaws. It reveals not just administrative confusion but systematic hollowing out of community rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA).

At its core lies a stark, and revealing, contradiction. For years, officials have insisted that the project will not displace tribes. “There will be no environmental impact and no tribal will be displaced due to the Great Nicobar project,” Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram said in the Rajya Sabha on March 12, 2025. Yet the draft plan explicitly mentions ‘relocation of Nicobarese tribal communities from tsunami-affected and project-impacted areas.’ Why relocate if there is no displacement?

The draft plan attempts to soften this by invoking the 2004 tsunami. It notes that families in settlements such as Rajiv Nagar and New Chingen ‘have expressed their intention to continue living there’ due to access to schools, jobs and amenities. Yet it simultaneously proposes new housing and infrastructure in ancestral locations, including ‘30 new houses… and 1 ha land per household’, described as ‘uninhabitable and unsuitable for cultivation.’

What is presented as voluntary return sits uneasily alongside project-driven relocation. Elsewhere, the draft plan offers only ‘an option’ for future relocation ‘outside the GNI Project area,’ while framing movement in terms of ‘project-impacted areas.’

Basic questions remain unanswered: Who exactly is to be relocated? From where, to where, and under what conditions? Population figures are “subject to change upon further enumeration,” land availability “need[s] to be discussed,” and even the plan’s consultation status remains unsettled.

More troubling is the legal vacuum in which it operates. The tribal council alleges that the FRA procedures were never initiated. In the draft plan, consent is asserted without evidence: no gram sabha records, no resolutions, no independent verification. Claims of ‘expressed interest in resettlement’ substitute for due process, even as those communities contest the process.

The legal inconsistencies extend further. The draft plan gestures toward compliance with The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013, but sidesteps
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of. Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956 — which is particularly significant given overlaps with Shompen territories. Proposals for infrastructure, including roads and other facilities, within forest and protected areas proceed without clarity on rights recognition or ecological safeguards. Even forest access is reduced to ‘where possible’, turning a statutory right into administrative discretion.

Beyond law, the draft plan falters on its own terms. It proposes a return to fragile, tsunami-affected coastlines, despite rising sea levels and the submergence of Indira Point. Livelihoods are imagined through plantations and fishing, yet the draft plan itself acknowledges that many families prefer proximity to Campbell Bay for ‘employment opportunities.’ Infrastructure proposals — from desalination plants to roads — appear aspirational, lacking ecological assessments or feasibility studies.

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The financial architecture is equally uncertain, as the projected outlay of Rs 42.52 crore rests on incomplete assumptions. Taken together, these contradictions point to a deeper problem. Planning here is not about evidence or community engagement, but about assembling a narrative that aligns with decisions already taken.

There is also a deeper philosophical question. Development, as articulated, seems to demand subjects who can be relocated, compensated, and ‘rehabilitated’ within a framework designed elsewhere. But the Nicobarese ties to land are not interchangeable units, and their territories are not merely economic assets. They are part of a living cultural landscape. To reduce this relationship to housing units and infrastructure packages is to fundamentally misunderstand it.

Shailendra Yashwant is a senior adviser to Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA). X: @shaibaba.