BANGKOK – India’s military is expanding across the Andaman Sea in Southeast Asia with the construction of a multibillion-dollar air and naval base on remote Great Nicobar Island, New Delhi’s farthest reach to the Straits of Malacca, where rival China ships more than 70% of its imported oil.
“The Grand Nicobar Island Project, which is of strategic, defense and national importance, transforms the region into a major sea and air connectivity hub in the Indian Ocean region,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi proudly shared on his social media in September.
New Delhi and its allies, potentially including Washington, could benefit in that water area if a serious conflict erupts with China following the completion of the massive project on the previously neglected and isolated island.
Construction has already begun. An initial phase allowing air and sea operations could be ready within a few years.
Great Nicobar is the southernmost island of India, 3,000 kilometers southeast of New Delhi, in the 800-kilometer-long tropical Nicobar archipelago.
“When completed, the Great Nicobar project will allow India to monitor activities near the Malacca Strait, a key trade corridor for China,” the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on May 22.
“Amid the blockade of Hormuz, supporters of the Indian project – including some of the country’s military veterans – argue that it would allow New Delhi to ‘control’ or cut off Chinese supply chains and exacerbate the ‘Malacca dilemma,'” the paper said.
China Global South Projects, a foreign-run analysis website, agreed and said on May 21: “Chinese analysts warn that India’s Nicobar push threatens Beijing’s ‘Malacca Lifeline’.”
Chinese analysts see the project as a sign that New Delhi is trying to turn Great Nicobar into an economic and military outpost near one of China’s most important sea lanes, giving India greater ability to monitor the Malacca Strait and the project’s impact across the region.
“India is increasingly seen as a maritime rival that could shape China’s access to the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian sea lanes and potentially gain influence near one of Beijing’s most important economic lifelines,” he reported.
When India completes construction of the Greenfield International Airport to handle fighter jets and commercial aircraft, it will replace the small airport at Campbell Bay, the small eastern capital of Great Nicobar Island.
The installation of advanced radar capability at Indian Naval Air Station Baaz (“Hawk” in Hindi) in Campbell Bay would give New Delhi greater surveillance over the western mouth of the equatorial Strait of Malacca, which is also used by the US Seventh Fleet.
Great Nicobar Island is just 175 kilometers northwest of the large Indonesian island of Sumatra, which forms the western mouth of the Malacca Strait, close to western Malaysia, Singapore and southwestern Thailand.
The strait, which opens to the Andaman Sea and the wider Indian Ocean, has come under increased focus as the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz turned the narrow waterways of sinking ships into a fluid chessboard.
India is also building a major deep-water seaport in the island’s southern Galathea Bay, which opens into the Andaman Sea, where about 70% of Chinese oil imports from the Middle East pass through the Straits of Malacca to China’s east coast.
The Galathea Bay International Container Transshipment Terminal is slated to become the country’s largest port, potentially dwarfing India’s west coast facilities in Mumbai (Bombay).
“It could be in competition to become the container handling hub of the entire Indo-Pacific region,” said Kumar Joshi, lieutenant governor of Great Nicobar Island.
Similar to international port facilities in Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, it will be used to transship and redirect cargo allowing larger ships to load or unload smaller vessels passing through to nearby ports across Southeast Asia.
India’s own shipping would be less expensive if it did not have to pay duties and taxes at those three foreign ports when its ships move cargo to and from other ships. Along with the Andaman Islands further north, Great Nicobar Island “is emerging as India’s gateway to Southeast Asia and the global Blue Economy,” Joshi said in October.
Construction is being carried out in phases, with an initial opening planned for 2028 and expansion to continue over the next 20 years. New Delhi also expects to earn money from fueling, repair, storage and other commercial activities for international ships transiting the Malacca Strait and the nearby Andaman Sea.
Tourism would also benefit from a boost when international travelers start arriving by air or cruise ship in Great Nicobar.
A new power plant on the island is in the works to supply power for the massive project, which will include a new city larger than the capital, populated by importing more than half a million Indians from the mainland to operate the facilities. Enthusiasts insist the island could become the next Hong Kong by mid-century.
However, many of the island’s 1,200 inhabitants hunt and gather their food in the rainforest, including about 300 Shompen tribes, who are among the most isolated and uncontacted on Earth.
“We, as scholars with expertise in the crime of genocide, are writing to express our gravest concern that the indigenous Shompen people of India’s Great Nicobar Island will face genocide if the plan to turn their island into the ‘Hong Kong of India’ goes ahead,” Survival International, a British campaign group for indigenous people, said in a petition to New Delhi.
“The people of Shompen have lived for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in harmony with the rich natural world of Great Nicobar Island, largely without contact with outsiders,” the petition said.
It was signed by 39 prominent American, British and other scholars of genocide and the Holocaust.
Meanwhile, environmentalists warn of potential toxic chemical pollution, disrupted ecosystems, threats to endangered land and sea creatures from spills and shipping, and other havoc from expanding military installations.
Concerned geologists reportedly documented the possibility of an underwater earthquake triggering a tsunami that could inundate the island.
The Great Nicobar Island is only about 910 square kilometers and almost entirely covered in dense forests, relatively unexplored, adorned by elegant lagoons and coral reefs rich in fish.
Hoping to quell complaints about the estimated $9 billion cost and potential environmental risks, Prime Minister Modi said the project is “a prime example of economy and ecology complementing each other” after upbeat Union minister Bhupender Yadav briefed him in September.
“The project is of great importance not only for the economic development of the island and the surrounding areas of the strategic location, but also for national defense and security,” India’s environmental court, known as the National Green Tribunal, ruled in 2023 favoring its development.
“The area is located in China’s ‘String of Pearls’ strategy, which is sought to be countered by the Indian authorities under India’s ‘Act East’ policy,” the court said.
The String of Pearls describes China’s growing number of foreign seaports, which have already been established in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, East Africa and elsewhere – worrying New Delhi, Washington and others.
India’s Act East policy refers to New Delhi’s recent efforts to strengthen trade, military and diplomatic ties with prosperous Southeast Asia, rather than prioritizing ties with its financially struggling South Asian border neighbors.
Richard S. Ehrlich is an American foreign correspondent based in Bangkok who has been reporting from Asia since 1978 and winner of the Columbia University Foreign Correspondents Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, “Rituals. Assassins. Wars. & Sex. – Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and New York” and “Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers and Freaks” are available. here.
