The rights of the Nicobar forests

A collection of essays is a timely attempt at ringing alarm bells over the proposed project port project in the ecologically fragile Galathea Bay of Nicobar island

THE GREAT NICOBAR BETRAYAL

Author: Pankaj Sekhsaria

Publisher: Frontline

Pages: 123

Price: Rs 495

How we perceive Andaman and Nicobar Islands will matter from now on. A port may replace a forest in Galathea Bay of Nicobar island. The forest has lost its rights but building the port is yet to start. The chance to choose the forest over the port is still alive. Our public institutions will make this choice soon. The Great Nicobar Betrayal is a rushed compilation of interesting views of thinkers who suggest we preserve the forest. The book is a collection of 13 opinion pieces published in the Wire, Frontline, and Sanctuary Asia. 

Most essays in the book are a bridge a reader can take to understand the politics behind the port’s development. Institutions involved are the Calcutta High Court, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a high powered committee set up by NGT, NITI Aayog, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited.

These institutions are forums where the choice between the port, or the forest will be made. Unfortunately, their objectivity is in doubt. Authors in the book have challenged the processes being followed and motives driving the individuals within these institutions. The government seems keen on the project, but what is happening within the government and its institutions is opaque. The book may help kickstart the reader’s investigation. It can also offer two important contexts: The lives of Nicobar’s native communities and the breadth of the forest’s biodiversity.

The island’s native communities are hoping to protect their ownership over the land. Shompen and Nicobarese are two native communities who lost their land to the Tsunami of 2004. Writer Manish Chandi’s essay is an important introduction to the community’s way of life. It helps one understand how the land natives lived on was also the space where their customs and norms for managing resources evolved. With their land lost to the sea, their community is lost too. Tribunals and courts will become important forums in which their negotiation to obtain and protect their land will play out soon.

This collection’s remarkable essays are on Nicobar’s biodiversity. Writer S Harikrishnan’s essay is a walking tour on snakes. Readers will find out about the nature of rare snakes in the Nicobar forest such as the cat snake named Boiga wallachi. Whales and dolphins amble in Nicobar’s waters too. Researcher Mahi Mankeshwar’s narration of spotting Bottlenose and Spinner dolphins can bring them to life for readers who haven’t been there. Birdwatcher Uday Mondal’s description may make a reader google the Hooded pitta bird. The bird’s “emerald-green body, brown head,  and  crimson  belly” is stunning to look at. The Giant Leatherback Turtle is probably Nicobar’s brand ambassador. The port can take away the turtle’s habitat. The law offers the turtle the highest protection, but as Shrishtee Bajpai points out, they’re in need of someone to speak for them.

The book’s value addition is its timeliness. It is also an attempt at ringing alarm bells. Nature is a long-term asset that is worth preserving. But at what cost? The nature and development trade-off is a key topic of growth. There are fewer references to any work of scholarship that can help a reader reconcile this trade-off and understand the constraints within which the choice will have to be made.

While the book may help make some costs visible, it concludes before it convinces. Questions such as the cost to national security and the cost to international trade if the port isn’t built aren’t spoken of. Because the book is a compilation of opinion pieces into a collection, it is high on rhetorical sentences written to serve advocacy, not inquiry. The book doesn’t take up the burden of asking deeper questions and answering them. For example, how was the development-nature trade-off negotiated in other forests in other geographies in India? Or can engineering really ensure that a port and a forest can coexist? Deeper questions of philosophy and morality that may guide thinking on the right thing to do are absent too.

The process by which land-use changes has a great force of power and politics behind it. Even if that land is in a turbulent seismic zone such as the Nicobar islands. Who wins the right to change land-use is a long-drawn and complex negotiation. What will happen to the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is a matter of great concern. Thanks to the book it is easier to parse the view of those negotiating to protect the forest and its community. It is also an efficient shortcut to begin an inquiry into the complexity of an important and relevant topic that is of concern for people’s rights and the future of  growth in India.

 The reviewer is an urban policy researcher. He also writes SimplyCity, a weekly newsletter on urbanisation at https://simplycity.substack.com