India Pushes Ahead With $9 Billion Megaproject on One of Its Most Remote — and Pristine — Islands

Picture a place so remote it takes a full 30-hour ferry ride just to reach it from the nearest neighbor — an island closer to Indonesia than to mainland India, with fireflies lighting up ancient forests and rare owls glaring at anyone who dares to visit. That's Great Nicobar Island. And India just decided it's time to bulldoze in.

India's government is pushing ahead with a $9 billion megaproject called the 'Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island' — a plan to transform this pristine, barely-populated speck in the Indian Ocean into a full-on infrastructure hub. We're talking a massive container shipping port, a dual-use civilian and military airport, a gas-and-solar power plant, and a brand-new city — all carved out of one of the most ecologically untouched places in the country. When it's done (in about 30 years, across four phases), the island is expected to be equipped to welcome a million tourists a year. Right now, fewer than 10,000 people live there. That's nearly a 100x population jump.

So why does India care so much about this tiny island? Two big reasons: trade and China.

On the trade side, India currently routes a significant chunk of its cargo through foreign ports — mainly Singapore and Colombo — at an estimated cost of $200–220 million in annual revenue losses. A port on Great Nicobar, sitting just 40 nautical miles from one of the world's busiest shipping corridors, could help India stop paying a middleman. Analysts also note that ongoing instability in the Strait of Hormuz has pushed India to think harder about securing its own supply routes.

On the China side, India is keenly aware that Beijing has been quietly securing port access and military positioning across the Indian Ocean — in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Djibouti. A military base on Great Nicobar would give India a strategic counter-presence right at the edge of the Strait of Malacca, through which roughly 35% of global maritime traffic flows.

But here's where it gets thorny. The island is home to the Shompen — one of the world's most isolated and uncontacted indigenous groups — and the Nicobarese, another tribal community. An anthropologist who worked with the Shompen told NPR that the project's own maps include areas these communities are known to inhabit. Astonishingly, the government's environmental impact report suggested using barbed wire to fence off Shompen territories to limit contact with construction workers. The Great Nicobar Tribal Council says parts of the project encroach on their ancestral land, despite official promises that it wouldn't.

The ecological stakes are just as high. Experts estimate up to 10 million trees could be cut down. The island is home to nesting leatherback sea turtles and the Nicobar pigeon — the closest living relative of the dodo. The government says it'll offset forest loss by planting trees in scrublands in northern India and relocating crocodiles and coral colonies. Critics aren't buying it.

The political climate around the project is chilling too. Nearly a dozen environmentalists, officials, and residents refused to talk to NPR on the record — some fearing they'd lose research funding or island access if they spoke out publicly. Indian ministers didn't respond to NPR's questions about the project's potential harms. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi called it the 'biggest scam and gravest crime' against nature during a visit to the island.

Why does this matter to you, even if you've never heard of Great Nicobar? Because this story is a microcosm of a tension playing out globally: what happens when national security ambitions and economic growth collide with indigenous rights and the environment — and the government gets to be the referee? The outcome here could set a template for how India — and other nations — handle dozens of similar projects in sensitive regions for decades to come.