India’s Great Nicobar Island is once again being carved open for corporate profit, and this time the cost is nothing less than the survival of its Indigenous communities. The Shompen—one of the world’s most isolated tribes—and the Nicobarese are being pushed to the brink as the government fast-tracks a massive ₹72,000-crore mega-project involving a transshipment port, township, and military infrastructure. This project, backed by corporate greed and rubber-stamped through compromised clearances, ignores ecological limits, tribal rights, and the constitutional safeguards that are supposed to protect these vulnerable populations.
What unfolds in Great Nicobar today is not “development”—it is dispossession. Forests will be felled, ancestral lands taken over, and entire lifeways destroyed, all while authorities pretend the tribals are mere obstacles to a corporate-military vision. The climate crisis—already battering the fragile Andaman & Nicobar ecosystems—is being worsened by decisions that prioritise profit over people. Once again, government policies align with corporate interests, not with India’s own citizens.
Source link:
https://thewire.in/environment/the-great-nicobar-tribes-a-time-to-live-or-a-time-to-die
