Anchoring the Indo-Pacific: Why the Greater Andaman-Nicobar Project is India’s Maritime Gamechanger

Part 2: India’s Greater Nicobar project aims to turn a remote frontier into a maritime stronghold, marrying economic ambition with strategic necessity to counter China’s reach.

For decades, India has gazed upon its eastern seaboard with both pride and unease. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands - remote, sparsely populated and ecologically sensitive - has often been seen more as a conservation headache than a strategic asset. That view is now changing. With China expanding its presence across the Indian Ocean, New Delhi has unveiled the Greater Andaman-Nicobar Integrated Development Project (GANIDP), a Rs. 72,000-crore undertaking that combines infrastructure, defence and commerce. The sweeping ambition that accompanies this project is to convert the Nicobars into both a transshipment hub and a naval bastion, securing India’s role in the Indo-Pacific.

The islands’ geography is destiny. They sit near the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, through which a quarter of global trade and the majority of China’s energy imports pass. Beijing’s strategists often fret about a ‘Malacca dilemma,’ which is the vulnerability of their supply lines at this chokepoint. To India, this vulnerability offers leverage. Should tensions escalate, Indian control over the Nicobars could in theory choke off Chinese shipping, imposing economic pain and naval paralysis.

The military component of the plan is explicit. Galathea Bay on Great Nicobar has been earmarked for a deep-sea port that can host container traffic and double as a naval base. Aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers and advanced air-defence systems could be deployed here, giving India the ability to blockade the Malacca Strait if required. General Anil Chauhan, the Chief of Defence Staff, has emphasised on the need for a more expansive maritime doctrine. The Nicobar project, by enabling the operation of nuclear-powered carriers and frontline warships, is intended as the linchpin of that doctrine.

History underscores the urgency for this. The nearby Coco Islands, once meant to be under India’s sway, were ceded to Burma after independence. In the 1990s, Myanmar allowed China to develop them into a naval outpost. More recently, Beijing has been building an airstrip at Lal Munirhat in Bangladesh, potentially enabling fighter-jet deployments in India’s backyard. These developments form part of China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy which involves ports and bases designed to encircle India. Against such encroachments, India’s reinforcement of the Nicobars is less an option than a necessity.

Critics of the plan argue otherwise. Environmentalists warn of habitat destruction, and activists raise alarms about the fate of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes, whose cultures have endured for millennia in fragile equilibrium with the land. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has called the project “an ecological disaster.” Her charge resonates with a broader scepticism that India cannot pursue large-scale development without trampling on people or nature.

But here, as in other episodes of India’s development politics, such objections are selective and reek of hypocrisy. When China militarised the Coco Islands, no protests were heard about indigenous rights or turtle nesting grounds. Yet when India proposes to build its own maritime hub, the chorus grows loud. To Indian officials, the timing is no coincidence: China’s supporters, they argue, would prefer the Nicobars remain underdeveloped and militarily toothless.

For anyone who cares to examine the project more closely, the Centre’s blueprint in fact stresses restraint. The project will cover 166 square kilometres - barely a tenth of Great Nicobar’s landmass. Its first phase centres on building a container transshipment port at Galathea Bay, with a projected capacity of 14.5m twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). If India manages to capture just 20 percent of the transshipment that currently bypasses it for Singapore or Colombo, the payoff would be enormous. Alongside the port will come an airport capable of handling wide-bodied jets, a power plant to meet civilian and military needs, and a new township at Campbell Bay, planned for 65,000 residents.

The project will unfold over three decades under the Andaman and Nicobar Integrated Development Corporation. Officials argue that the gradual pace will allow adjustments to minimise disruption. Environmental clearances have already passed through scrutiny by the Zoological Survey of India, the Wildlife Institute of India, and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History. The National Board for Wildlife’s Standing Committee has de-notified parts of the Galathea Bay sanctuary but simultaneously recommended eight ecological corridors to preserve animal movement. Monitoring mechanisms, the government insists, will ensure that biodiversity is not sacrificed at the altar of development.

On the sensitive matter of displacement, New Delhi has promised “rehabilitation with dignity.” The government points to its record in connecting other marginalised regions like Bastar and parts of the Northeast to welfare and development programmes. In contrast to China’s urbanisation model, where millions have been relocated without consultation, India aspires to harmonise development with social justice. Whether this aspiration will be met in practice remains to be seen. But the pledge itself signals a recognition that the project cannot succeed if it alienates local populations.

The economic stakes are high. Nearly 60 percent of India’s seaborne trade passes through the Malacca Strait, including crucial LNG imports. By developing Galathea Bay into a world-class hub, India could reduce reliance on foreign ports, gain hard-currency revenues, and position itself as a key link in Asian supply chains. For neighbouring Southeast Asian countries wary of overdependence on China, an Indian-controlled port offers a welcome alternative.

The project’s symbolic impact may be greater still. For decades, India’s security outlook has been landlocked, focused on Pakistan and the Himalayan border with China. But the 21st century will be shaped at sea, where trade routes, chokepoints, and naval reach define global power. By pressing ahead with the Nicobar project, India signals that it understands this shift. Rather than reacting to China’s moves, it seeks to shape the strategic map itself.

Risks certainly abound. The long gestation period leaves the project vulnerable to bureaucratic inertia, political change, and funding shortfalls. Environmental safeguards, though extensive on paper, will be tested in practice. Integrating indigenous communities requires sensitivity that the state has often failed to display elsewhere. And some defence analysts question whether India, with its limited resources, can sustain such ambitious naval expansion while modernising its army and air force.

Yet, inaction is more dangerous than the risks. China’s naval build-up shows no sign of slowing. Its bases, stretching from Djibouti to Gwadar and beyond, encircle the Indian Ocean. Left undeveloped, the Nicobars would remain a weak link in India’s defence chain, a strategic gift to Beijing. The Greater Andaman-Nicobar Project, for all its difficulties, represents an assertion of sovereignty. It is a statement that India intends to be a shaper, not a bystander, in the Indo-Pacific.

If successful, the Nicobar project will leave future generations a secure bastion rather than a vulnerable frontier. Either way, the Andamans are no longer a forgotten outpost today. They form the frontline of India’s Indo-Pacific gamble.