We are in Barnabas Manju’s office, a one-bedroom house in a government quarters in Campbell Bay. He is the chairman of the Tribal Council of Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar. A long-pending demand of the Tribal Council is for a formal office with work equipment. “There is nothing here. No computers to work. We just have a chair,” Barnabas said. 

From a demand for a formal office to answers on a mega project that threatens to destroy their way of life, Barnabas Manju is stonewalled and his visitors surveilled. It is daytime but we are sitting in the dark with the curtains closed and the lights turned off because the local police and Intelligence Bureau are tracking us. 

The bureaucratic juggernaut is slowly but surely rolling ahead with plans for a Rs 81,000 crore project on the island of Great Nicobar, which is home to two tribal communities – the almost completely isolated Shompen and the Nicobarese – and numerous endemic plant and animal species. A majority of the island today is covered by rainforests, which are part of the Sundaland biodiversity hotspot extending to Southeast Asia. It includes places like Borneo, Java and Sumatra. 

When a social impact assessment was commissioned for the project that held deep ramifications for the tribes’ habitats, neither Barnabas nor others from the Nicobarese community were invited to the discussions.

Spearheaded by the union home ministry, the project comprises a transshipment terminal, an international airport, gas and solar power plants, a township, and high-end tourism facilities. While it is already in the final stage of gaining statutory approvals, more plans are being revealed, such as an international cruise terminal. Companies like Adani Ports and JSW Infrastructure, Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Ltd and Navayuga Engineering Co Ltd have reportedly expressed interest in operating and running the transshipment terminal.

The island, which has not entirely recovered from the devastating tsunami of 2004, is now at the mercy of a determined union government that refuses to answer questions about the project and routinely denies information sought under the Right to Information Act, citing section 8(1)(a), which states “information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence,” can be denied. The local administration is also equally tight-lipped about the project.

The assistant commissioner, who is the executive head for the island of Great Nicobar, denied multiple requests for an interview. Local forest officials in the Nicobar division of the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department too did not wish to speak about the project, while one officer in particular, the assistant conservator of Forests, said the project is covered by the Official Secrets Act and he will not be engaging in any discussions about it.

Even as approvals are being given, there is no estimate of which tribal villages and hunting and foraging grounds will be taken over or what social impact such a takeover will have on the two communities. 

The only way to realise which tribal areas are set to be lost to the project is if one looks at a 20-year-old map prepared by a researcher, Manish Chandi, for there has never been any systematic governmental effort to map tribal lands in Great Nicobar either. In fact, the map in a feasibility report prepared for the project in March 2021 completely ignored tribal settlements and foraging areas and chose to show only national forests, forest reserves, and revenue lands.

There is a clear overlap of the project area and tribal lands when compared with the map prepared by Manish. 

As criticism from all quarters has mounted about the mega project for the havoc it will wreak, the administration has maintained an eagle eye over its people and outsiders, especially journalists. Our movements were tracked as soon as we arrived in Campbell Bay. Our interview with the Nicobarese community in the tribal colony in Rajiv Nagar was once stopped by a jeep full of police and IB personnel. The local Forest Department also denied us permission to visit Galathea Bay, the proposed site of the transshipment terminal, though it was open to Indian government officials and even tourists. 

Unmapped tribal lands set to be taken over for the project

The autochthonous tribes of Shompen and Nicobarese have lived on the island of Great Nicobar for thousands of years. 

The Shompen are a semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer community and they live deep in the forests in Great Nicobar. They are, by and large, isolated from the rest of the population on the island. They are a particularly vulnerable tribal group with a population of just around 250. 

The Nicobarese are also a tribal community but they are largely a settled population. They grow plantations, fish and hunt, and in recent years, they have also taken up daily wage work to make a living. They are spread across Nicobar islands like Car Nicobar, Little Nicobar and Great Nicobar. The population of the Nicobarese in Great Nicobar is about 1,200.

In the Nicobarese language, the Great Nicobar island is called ‘Patai Takaru’ meaning ‘the big island’ because, with an area of 920 sq km, the island is the biggest one in the Nicobar group of islands. We do not know how the Shompen conceptualise their land and forests because their language has not been deciphered yet. 

The project will displace Nicobarese and Shompen communities whose way of life is closely connected to their lands. It will take over forests comprising settled villages and areas used for foraging, hunting and plantations. Like Chingenh, Kirasis and Kurchinom in Galathea Bay; In Haengloi and Pulo Baha in Pemmaya Bay; and Kokeon, Bui Jayae and Pulo Pakka in Nanjappa Bay. 

“All these villages will go when the project comes. These are all tribal villages,” Barnabas said, pointing to a map prepared by researcher Manish Chandi, taped onto the wall in his office. Manish Chandi prepared the map between 2000 and 2004 when he was working with the Andaman Nicobar Environment Team and later went on to pursue a PhD in the field of human ecology. To date, this remains the only comprehensive map of the island that lists tribal lands.

The map shows settlements like Chingenh, In Haengloi and Kokeon along the south and southwest coasts of the island. These are ancestral villages of the Nicobarese who were settled by the government in a tribal colony in Rajiv Nagar after the 2004 tsunami. Some of these areas also belong to the Shompen. The two communities share a bartering relationship over forest and agricultural products. 

In fact, Chingenh, which Barnabas pointed to on the map, is located right in the area where the transshipment terminal is proposed to be built in Galathea Bay. This location is a biodiversity hotspot and serves as one of the largest nesting sites in the world for giant leatherback turtles. 

The Nicobar division of the Andaman and Nicobar forest department did not permit us to visit Galathea Bay even while a steady stream of tourists and government officials from the island, Port Blair and New Delhi were allowed and even escorted by the department during the same time. Many of the officials were visiting Galathea Bay for project-related work. 

A ‘babu’s’ idea of demarcation

It is no secret that the local administration in Great Nicobar has been relying on the map prepared by Manish for decades now to identify tribal areas. The map was used as and when it was convenient to contact the tribes but ignored when the proposed project directly threatened the tribes’ way of life. 

The maps that have been used to plan the mega project do not list lands used by the two tribal communities. This, even while it seeks to take over such lands. This disingenuity reveals that no attempt was made to sincerely assess the impact of the land acquisition on the affected communities or be deterred by the protections that covered the land.

The rescue and relief efforts after the tsunami of 2004 relied heavily on Manish’s map to locate tribal areas. In fact, the office of the then Assistant Commissioner in Campbell Bay specifically requested Manish’s help in locating tribal communities and their villages. Manish also provided details of tribal community demographics and land ownership patterns. 

After 2004, Manish added more Nicobarese settlements and Shompen community areas to this map. However, given that these are efforts undertaken by one individual, the map is not exhaustive. It is safe to assume that there are many more unmapped tribal settlements and foraging grounds, more so those belonging to the Shompen community. 

This reporter visited and spoke to various officials from the Andaman and Nicobar administrations, such as the office of the assistant commissioner (Campbell Bay), the Nicobar division of the forest department and the directorate of tribal welfare. None of them possessed maps where tribal settlements and foraging grounds were marked. Every office only displayed maps with broad boundaries like revenue areas, tribal reserves and national parks.

“The government has no proper map of tribal areas. There has been no systematic mapping effort,” said Vishvaji Pandya, an anthropologist and Director of the Andaman Nicobar Tribal Research Institute under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. “They use vague language like ‘upper road Shompen’ and ‘lower road Shompen’. And these roads have been washed away in the [2004] tsunami! It’s a babu’s idea of demarcation.” Babu, in colloquial Hindi, means a bureaucrat. 

Even the Anthropological Survey of India, including its regional centre in Andaman and Nicobar, does not have a map that chalks out lands belonging to the Shompen and the Nicobarese in Great Nicobar. This was confirmed by Anstice Justin, former deputy director of the Anthropological Survey of India. Anstice also belongs to the Nicobarese community from Car Nicobar.

Consider the report prepared by AECOM, the consultancy engaged by NITI Aayog to assess the feasibility of the mega project. The land use map contained in this report shows the location of national parks, forest reserves and revenue lands but not tribal settlements and foraging grounds, something that is clearly shown in the map prepared by Manish. 

The documents submitted as part of environment clearance also listed the project only in the revenue areas of Campbell Bay, Govind Nagar, Joginder Nagar, Vijay Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Shastri Nagar, completely ignoring the fact that tribal areas will also be taken over. 

No social impact assessment for tribes

Overall, the mega project requires 166 sq km of land on the island, including 130 sq km of forest land and 84 sq km designated as a tribal reserve. There is an overlap between lands designated as forest land and tribal reserves.

These lands comprise settlements, ancestral lands and foraging grounds of the Nicobarese and the Shompen, as well as revenue areas where settlers from mainland states like Punjab, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu live. 

In 1969, the then union government settled families of ex-military servicemen from Punjab on the island, mainly for security purposes. In the following years, ex-servicemen families from other parts of India were also settled on the island. Later, other people like fishermen and labourers from various parts of the country also arrived. Today, the settler population on the island is around 6,500.

Given such a scale of impact, the Directorate of Social Welfare under the Andaman and Nicobar administration sought a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) report from Probe Research and Social Development Pvt. Ltd. Not much is known about the company except that it classifies itself as engaged in “research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering.” It has also undertaken social impact assessments for construction-related land acquisition in other islands like Lakshadweep. 

A social impact assessment is a legal requirement under the Social Impact Assessment and Consent Rules of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. But the mandate of the SIA report was limited to assessing the impacts of the proposed airport, not the transshipment terminal or any of the other components of the project like the township and tourism facilities. 

The final SIA report submitted by Probe Research and Social Development is also mum on the impacts of the mega project on the Nicobarese and the Shompen.

The only mention of the impact on tribal communities in the SIA report is vague. It states, “As far as possible, the affected families shall be relocated in a similar ecological zone, so as to preserve the economic opportunities, language, and culture and community life of the tribal communities.”

 “Nicobarese villages will be affected by the project. But they did not invite us [to social impact assessment meetings] for discussions,” Barnabas recalled.

A few days later, we met two women from the Nicobarese community in Barnabas’s office to resume the conversation that was stopped by the police and IB at the tribal colony in Rajiv Nagar earlier. They spoke to us on the condition of anonymity. 

Recollecting the abrupt end of the previous meeting, one of them said, “You had come to take our views and we wanted to share. So, why did they stop it?” 

“Someone has come from outside. They want to talk to us. They will understand our problems and sadness. They will ask and we will tell them,” the other woman said. 

Both of them expressed fears of being removed from their land for the development of the mammoth project. “Our views are suppressed now. When the project comes, they can remove us from here [Rajiv Nagar] also. Where will we go then?” they ask. 

For the Nicobarese community in Rajiv Nagar, this will mark a second displacement, the first one being in 2004 because of the tsunami.  

Displacement is not new for the Shompen either. In a chapter titled ‘Ignored Shompens in Hiding’ in the book Andaman and Nicobar Tribes Restudied, Rann Singh Mann, who previously served as a director of AnSI, documents this phenomenon in detail. He writes about how the Shompen had to give up some of their land when ex-servicemen settlers were brought to the island and with it came loss of forest resources, death due to diseases and erosion of their culture. Being a relatively isolated tribe, the Shompen are not exposed to and therefore have not built an immunity to diseases from mainland India. The mega project also entails disease risks for the Shompen, given it will bring large populations from the mainland. 

A few days after this, we arranged another meeting at the tribal colony in Rajiv Nagar to speak to one of the captains of a Nicobarese village that will be taken over for the project. In the Nicobarese system, captains are village heads. 

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he emphasised the importance of living in their own lands. “Our land is necessary to secure our future,” he said, referring to ancestral lands that the community would like to return to. The Nicobarese have made it clear that they would not like any development activities on their traditional lands.

Ever since the tsunami in 2004, the Nicobarese living in Rajiv Nagar have asked to be relocated to their original villages and for facilities like roads, housing and electricity to be provided there. These villages are along the south and southwest coast – some of the same areas chalked out now for the mega ports like Chingen and Kokeon. The Andaman and Nicobar administration has never accepted their demands for relocation. Now, the project entails the permanent displacement of the Nicobarese from their original villages.  

The captain added that he would have had no problem with the project if it were not taking over their lands. Although he does raise one concern with the project: “The project will bring a lot of people to this island, and for them, the government can change all the rules. Tomorrow, they can tell us to vacate. Where will we go?”

Members of the community also speak about how living in Rajiv Nagar has slowly eroded their cultural practices. Earlier, festivals were celebrated for weeks and even death ceremonies were an elaborate affair. Ancestors were remembered and celebrated for months.

But today, the government has not given them land to undertake plantations that could provide food for large group activities. They often have difficulty accessing forest resources for daily needs like food and building their homes. Communal practices like living in large families have also been discontinued because the tsunami shelters in Rajiv Nagar are small. As a result, they now do not celebrate festivals that last more than a day or two.

Anstice Justin, the Nicobarese anthropologist quoted above who previously served as deputy director of AnSI, said there was no need for the Nicobarese to work outside their villages earlier. “They had their own plantations and it was a plantation-based economy. Today, some of them work in construction as daily wage labourers. And now, the international port and tourism [planned as part of the mega project] is not going to be useful for the Nicobarese community.”

“It is good to develop the island and to ensure [national] security but the government has to think about the Nicobarese,” Anstice added. He also echoed another fear expressed by the community members and the captain: “In the long run, I have a feeling that there will be no space for tribal people in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, even in Great Nicobar.” 

As of today, the fate of tribal communities in the Andaman group of islands is dire too. The Andaman and Nicobar administration settled the Great Andamanese on Strait Island. The tribe was earlier spread across the Andaman islands but the government has now confined them to Strait Island. The Jarawa, an Andamanese tribe, have lost a lot of their land to developmental activities that have not only not benefitted them but have also led to poaching, illegal logging and exploitation of Jarawa women. And Onge, another Andamanese tribe, is also being pushed to exclusion and marginalisation on the island of Little Andaman. 

As for the Shompen, there is no way to communicate with the community because we do not understand their language. However, in one rare instance, some members of the community expressed opposition to intrusions into their forests.  

In 2020, the Andaman and Nicobar administration formed an empowered committee composed of persons who have worked for decades in Great Nicobar to understand on-ground sentiments about the development of a transshipment terminal. The committee included Vishvajit Pandya, the anthropologist who earlier spoke about how no mapping exercise has been undertaken by any government agency and Manish Chandi, the only person who has mapped tribal lands in Great Nicobar. 

The video report that the committee submitted to the Andaman and Nicobar administration featured comments made by a member of the Shompen community, translated into Hindi by a Nicobarese who understands their language to a limited extent. The report has not been released publicly by the administration but some video clippings from it were included in a webinar held four years ago. 

“Do not come near our hills,” one of the Shompen men says. “If you want to cut forests, cut them along the coast. But do not climb our forests.”

This is the only glimpse that the outside world has had into what the Shompen think. However, the views expressed in the video are limited to one particular group of Shompen. The Shompen live in many small groups comprising 20-30 people, referred to as “bands.” The outside world has almost no contact with the Shompen, who live deep in the forests in Great Nicobar. 

Nevertheless, Probe Research and Social Development – the private company that conducted the SIA – did not take into account any such concerns expressed by the two tribal communities. 

In July 2024, Probe Research and Social Development submitted the final SIA report to the Directorate of Social Welfare. The report detailed the land holdings of the settler community, the associated social and economic impacts of the project and compensation and rehabilitation issues. The report did not present a map showing tribal settlements and steered clear of assessing impacts from taking over lands of the Nicobarese and the Shompen. 

The final SIA report included detailed maps and land-use patterns in project-affected revenue areas like Gandhi Nagar and Shastri Nagar. A public hearing was also held in June 2024 to assess the sentiments of the settler community about the project and its potential impact. No such public hearings were conducted for the tribal communities. 

Local administration gives go-ahead even before impact assessment

During the early stages of the project in 2021-22, when no impact assessments – environmental or social – had even begun, both the forest department and the tribal welfare department wrote to the Andaman and Nicobar administration, assenting to the project. In fact, the director of tribal welfare wrote, stating that his office is even willing to provide exemptions from the protection of Aboriginal tribes policies and regulations to ensure the execution of the project. 

The then divisional forest officer for the Nicobar division of the Andaman and Nicobar forest department said his office had no objection to the cutting of 130 sq km of forests for the mega project.

For the forest clearance, a no-objection letter was obtained from the Tribal Council in 2022. But the council withdrew it later, stating it was obtained by providing false information that their lands would not be taken away. Barnabas Manju said the meetings were held amid Independence Day preparations and celebrations between August 13 and 16 in 2022 and he was rushed to sign the NOC. He also said that they were assured that the Nicobarese community would get all the help they needed to get settled in their pre-tsunami ancestral settlements, but it was never mentioned in the minutes of the proceedings. Today, the project is set to take over many such ancestral lands of the Nicobarese and also the forests of the Shompen.

This report is republished from The News Minute as part of the NL-TNM alliance. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity. Support our work here. And click here to contribute to our upcoming investigation project on the impunity of India’s police.