Talk abstract:

Dreams of mega development herald disaster for the highly vulnerable Great Nicobar Island, which is the southernmost and largest landmass in the chain that makes up the A&N Islands in the Bay of Bengal. A Rs.72,000 (now Rs. 82,000)_ crore project that is planned for the development of this island will result in destroying both the island’s delicate rainforest ecosystem and its indigenous people. In The Great Nicobar Betrayal, Pankaj Sekhsaria, one of the best known chroniclers of contemporary issues in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has compiled a set of articles written by various experts across publications that examine the proposed project from every angle—environmental, geological, impact on local communities, law, due process, and ecology. These pieces together shed light on the magnitude of the disaster that will be unleashed on this pristine place if the project comes through. The book is a warning and a catalogue of the manmade catastrophe that lurks on the horizon, one that will destroy more than the tsunami of December 2004 ever did.

In this presentation Sekhsaria will make a detailed presentation that underlines both the fragility and vulnerability of the island and also explain why he and many others have called the project a mega folly and an unprecedented disaster.

Speaker’s bio: 

Pankaj Sekhsaria is a long time member of the environmental group Kalpavriksh and currently Associate Professor, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), IIT Bombay. His research interests lie at the intersection of science, environment, society and technology. He has been working on the A&N Islands for over three decades and He has written extensively on issues there. He has edited/authored six books on the islands including his debut novel ‘The Last Wave’ (Harper Collins 2014), a collection of journalism titled ‘Islands in Flux – the Andaman and Nicobar Story’ (Harper Collins 2024) and most recently ‘The Great Nicobar Betrayal’ (Frontline 2024).