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Jun 09, 2026
Rohit KA & Dr A Adityanjee

Great Nicobar: India’s Geoeconomic Gateway to the Indo‑Pacific

Introduction The Great Nicobar transhipment port project is more than an infrastructural plan.It is India’s attempt to anchor itself at the junction of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, capture the regional transhipment traffic and give tangible maritime content to its Look East/ Act East policy. By leveraging the island’s location near key sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) and integrating the port with an airport, power plant, and township, India hopes to reposition itself within Indo-Pacific trade and connectivity networks. Background To understand the Great Nicobar Project, it is first necessary to position itself within India’s broader journey in the Indo-Pacific and the evolution of its Look East/Act East policy. understand India’s larger journey in the Indo-Pacific and the evolution of its Look East/Act East policy. In the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War and India’s own economic reforms, New Delhi realised that its future economic growth and security would depend heavily on linkages with Southeast Asia rather than just the subcontinent. India was not welcome in the APEC due to resistance from some of the ASEAN countries like Malaysia and later due to opposition by China and the US. The Look East Policy was launched to build trade, diplomatic, and cultural ties with ASEAN countries, signalling that India wanted to “Look” beyond its near abroad or the so-called South Asia region. Over time, this “Look East Policy” turned into an Act East policy. This more active, implementation-oriented framework focused on physical connectivity, trade integration, and security cooperation in the wider Indo-Pacific. The idea was no longer just to talk or sign agreements but more to invest in roads, ports, air links, and regional partnerships that would tie India into the global supply chain network. The Indo-Pacific itself emerged as the new strategic-economic geography of the 21st century, where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet and where the bulk of global trade flows. Against this backdrop, the Great Nicobar project represents one of India’s most visible attempts to translate its Act East commitments into concrete maritime infrastructure at the junction of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There are loud and motivated criticisms and legal challenges from biased parties, including NGOs and political opposition, on environmental grounds and on grounds of disturbing the habitats of tribal populations. Geostrategic relevance of Great Nicobar Great Nicobar is India’s southernmost inhabited island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, placed very close to the Six Degree Channel and the western approaches to the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. These straits are among the busiest chokepoints in the world, carrying a large share of global container traffic and energy flows between the Indian Ocean and East Asia. Large ships passing between the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia on one side and China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia on the other have to transit these waters. Great Nicobar’s location places it just off the main east-west shipping routes, allowing large vessels to call at the island without major deviation from their routes. For India, this means it now has a sovereign island-based node right at the doorway to ASEAN’s maritime core, rather than being confined to midland ports farther west. In Indo-Pacific terms, the island becomes a forward point from which India can monitor and participate in the flow of goods, capital, and connectivity that defines the region. By developing infrastructure here, India is effectively shifting its maritime attention southward and ensuring that it is physically present at the junction of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Great Nicobar Project The Great Nicobar project is a long-term plan to develop the island as a major international container transhipment hub with supporting infrastructure. The international container transhipment port (ICTP) at Galathea Bay is the core of the plan. It is designed to handle ultra-large container ships that currently call at hubs like Singapore, Colombo, or Port Klang. According to information from World Trade Scanner, the design leverages natural water depths of about 20 meters, reducing the need for extensive dredging and allowing very large vessels to berth directly. The port is planned to be built in phases: an initial capacity of around 4 million TEUs per year, with later phases pushing the total to about 16 million TEUs, making it a serious regional hub. Alongside the port, the project includes a greenfield international airport to support both civilian and logistics-linked air traffic, enabling faster movement of cargo and people. A dedicated power plant, based on gas and renewable energy, will supply reliable electricity for port operations, industries, and townships. Finally, an integrated township is planned to house port workers, logistics staff, service providers, and their families, with schools, hospitals, and commercial areas together. These elements form a city port complex that is designed to function as a self-contained economic zone at the edge of the Indian Ocean, with the port as the engine of growth. Geoeconomics - How Great Nicobar changes India’s trade and Logistics The Great Nicobar project is fundamentally a geoeconomic move that seeks to reconfigure how India is positioned in global maritime trade. Today, a large share of India’s container traffic that requires transhipment is routed through foreign ports; these foreign ports include Singapore, Colombo, and Port Klang. This means India pays for services such as port charges, fuel, and wharfage, but most of the value addition and infrastructure revenue remains abroad. The shipments themselves are often carried on global liners that pass very close to Great Nicobar anyway, yet they do not stop at an Indian port. By building a large, deep-draft transhipment hub at Great Nicobar, India aims to bring that traffic inside its own territory so that cargo is rehandled at an Indian-controlled port rather than foreign ones. This reduces transit time and cost for Indian exporters and importers who trade with Southeast and East Asia, improves predictability in supply chains, and allows India to capture a share of regional cargo. Third-country traffic moving between the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia can also use Great Nicobar as a hub for transferring containers to smaller feeder ports. The resulting hub-and-spoke model allows India to become a regional transhipment node, attracting shipping lines that want an efficient alternative or supplement to existing hubs. Over time, the port can generate employment in logistics, warehousing, cold chains, bunkering, ship repair, maritime finance, and insurance, creating a broader maritime services ecosystem that aligns with national programs like Sagarmala and Maritime India Vision, which seek to make India not only a land-based manufacturing and consumption hub but also a serious maritime trading and logistics power in the Indo-Pacific. Policy Linkage - How Nicobar Advances the Look East/Act East Policy The Great Nicobar project is one of the most concrete ways in which India is now giving physical, maritime content to the Look East and Act East policies. Until recently, Act East was largely expressed through diplomacy, regional forums, road corridors, and some defense exercises. The India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) trilateral highway and connectivity schemes in Northeast India were important, but the sea carries far more trade volume than land routes. By building a major port facing the ASEAN and East Asian maritime heartland, India is finally providing a sea-facing infrastructure for its Act East agenda. The great Nicobar hub directly links India’s domestic economy to the shipping networks that serve ASEAN, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and East Asia. This allows Indian trade with ASEAN and East Asia to move faster and at lower cost, making Indian goods more competitive, while also enabling regional partners to see India as a credible logistics and connectivity partner rather than only a diplomatic participant. Global shipping lines are more likely to consider an Indian port as a viable node in their east-west routes, which in turn deepens India’s integration into regional and global supply chains. India deliberately chose not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) because of a lack of respect for ASEAN about Indian concerns. ASEAN itself has been a somewhat dysfunctional organisation that India has engaged with consistently without an optimal response. In this sense, the port becomes a bricks-and-steel manifestation of the Act East Policy; instead of only attending meetings or signing MoUs, India is investing in hard infrastructure at the threshold of the Indo-Pacific's core maritime base. The project signals that India is serious about being an active, forward-present stakeholder in the region’s maritime economy, not just a passive user of external ports. Strategic Implications Taken together, the Great Nicobar Project marks a significant shift in how India positions itself geoeconomically and geo-strategically in the Indo-Pacific. Geoeconomically, it aims to capture transhipment traffic, stimulate port-led industrial growth, and embed India more deeply into regional and global supply chains. This reduces dependence on foreign hubs and strengthens India’s autonomy in logistics and trade. The hub can serve not only India’s own trade but also regional and inter-regional cargo, positioning India as a central actor in the network of east-west shipping lanes. Geo-strategically, the project places Indian infrastructure on the threshold of ASEAN’s maritime core, overlooking some of the World’s busiest sea lanes. This gives India greater leverage in discussions about connectivity, security, rules of the road, and information sharing in the Indo-Pacific. If we do not develop the Andaman & Nicobar infrastructure, dangers are that India will be run over by other powers, as happened in the South China Sea. Victor Gao, a prominent Chinese think-tank, has floated the idea that China could take over the Andaman & Nicobar Islands by making an extravagant claim. Similarly, during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the then Indonesian the President Sukarno while supporting Pakistan, had toyed with the idea of occupying the Andaman & Nicobar Islands The project avoids framing the hub as a direct military or security tool. The island can function as a forward node from which India supports regional trade and participates in shaping the cooperative maritime order. By explicitly linking this forward infrastructure into the Act East policy, the project ties together location, trade, connectivity, and foreign policy intent into a coherent narrative. India is no longer content to be a passive user of the Indo-Pacific's maritime commons but is investing in forward infrastructure that positions it as a central actor in the region’s evolving trade and strategic order. If implemented as envisaged, Great Nicobar could serve as both a geoeconomic gateway and a geostrategic anchor for India, although the pace of execution and regional responses will ultimately determine its impact. We have advocated for India to float an Indo-Pacific Cooperation Organisation for India’s economic integration with East Asia and Pacific Island countries. Conclusions India’s geo-strategic, maritime and geo-economic interests lie in trade and connectivity with East Asia and Pacific Island countries. The Great Nicobar transhipment port project is just one element of the economic infrastructure that India is building to safeguard its future. No amount of negative handwringing on any grounds should detract India from implementing the project at a fast pace. References www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/great-nicobar-island-container-transhipment-port-notified-as-major-port-govt-101754392/ www.maritimegateway.com/government-declares-great-nicobar-island-container-transhipment-port-as-major-port/ www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/international-container-transhipment-port-in-great-nicobar-island www.pmfias.com/great-nicobar-project/ https://worldtradescanner.com/International%20Container%20Transhipment%20Port%20(ICTP).htm#:~:text=The%20development%20of%20this%20Mega,the%20proximity%20including%20Indian%20Ports. India, APEC and the US https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/india-apec-and-us Whither ASEAN: What Is in A Name? https://www.boloji.com/articles/52707/whither-asean-what-is-in-a-name From the Asian Century to a Peaceful and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Cooperation Organisation (IPCO) https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/from-the-asian-century-to-a-peaceful-and-prosperous-indo-pacific-cooperation-organisation-ipco Why Do We Need an Indo-Pacific Cooperation Organisation (IPCO)? https://www.boloji.com/articles/52618/why-do-we-need-an-indo-pacific-cooperation-organization-ipco

Jun 06, 2026
B S Murthy

The Secular Cure of India’s Semitic Cancer

Exhibiting an abnormal Abrahamic unity, the Christians and the Muslims, at odds with each other, the world over, combine to jointly undermine the Sanatana Dharma, aka Hinduism, in the Hindu-majority India. However, there’s nothing intriguing about that for both seek to expand their exclusivist religious footprints in the fertile fields of the populous republic with a political system that willy-nilly facilitates proselytisation like nowhere else. Hence, so as to devise appropriate devices to tackle this Semitic menace that their chequered history makes them suffer, even after their so-called independence, Hindus of the day need to delve into the cultish credos of these dogmatic faiths, especially given their unfettered demographic growth has cancerous consequences to the Indian body politic, in the not-so-distant future. To start with, for both these desert faiths, it’s an article of faith that their mutually exclusivist dogmas, with intolerant streaks inherent to them, have universal applicability with unquestionable divinity – while Jesus asserted that “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned”, the Azan affirms that “There is none worthy of worship except Allah”. That’s not all, for the Christians, the Hindus are heathens, needing to be redeemed as their deities are fake and deserve to be ditched. What’s worse, for the Muslims, they are infidels, condemned to die at their hands, and their females, the legitimate sexual targets, all for the glory of Allah, no less, which fallacy, lo, the Muslim women take to their hearts! Thus, the demographic growth, more so of the Muslim kind, has a psychopathic dimension to it that is detrimental, even to free speech, the foundation of the once Hindu-achieved, human excellence, now sought to be throttled by the Islamic fanaticism - gustakh-e-nabi ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda (disrespect Muhammad and get beheaded). So, it should be really scary to imagine the horrific effects of the cancerous growth of these converted characters, who tend to despise their ancestral culture and become implacably hostile to its ancient people, to uphold the delusional traits of these dogmatic faiths mindlessly. All the same, the goody-goody Hindus condescend to descend to these misfits, more so to the Islamic variety, attributing their religious bigotry as well as their social aggression to their lack of literacy and their economic backwardness, never mind their highly educated fidayeen and the well-heeled terrorists unerringly belie the falsity of their fantasy. But yet, these very Hindus look the other way as, of late, the Indian corporate portals have become the frontiers of love jihad to coerce the Hindu women into converting, what with the female faithful pimping for their male co-religionists. So, the scourge of these religious conversions is not so much about the depletion of the Hindu ranks but about the increment of the demented characters that have already become formidable. But strangely, the Hindu Islamapologists are not perturbed, at least not yet, neither by the converts’ calculated demographic spread nor by their hateful behavioural patterns, and, as can be seen, there is a habit, and history, to that. Well, Alberuni in his Tarikh al-Hind, written around 1030 CE, noted that "The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs". That the Hindus then should have gloated about themselves in like fashion, that too in the wake of Ghazani’s sack of Somnath, not to speak of Qasim’s conquest of the Sind, as early as 712 CE, which was 102 years after Muhammad had firmed up Islam, belies their delusional mindset that has been persistently prevalent ever since in its profusion! It is another matter, though, that none of the Hindu kings ever ventured to reclaim the Sind for their Hindustan, like the Christians, who around the same time, had initiated the Reconquista to liberate Spain from the clutches of the same Musalmans. If anything, it is the telling difference between the Hindus and the followers of the Semitic faiths that proved fatal to India over the centuries. Why, even now, there’s no dearth of the woolly Hindus, who assert that the Semitic conversion sprees pose no threat to the Sanatana Dharma for, after all, it survived the Islamic Mogul Rule and the Christian British Raj, together lasting over a millennium, never mind at the end of it all, they were forced to part with one fourth of their ancestral land for a homeland for Muslims, evocatively named Pakistan. Be that as it may, the cruel joke of India’s partition, based on Jinnah’s assertion that “Hindus and Muslims were two distinct nations with separate religions, cultures, and values” was that, out of 95 million Muslims at that time, 35 million of them that is over one-third, staid put in India, owing in no small measure to the Muslim-minded Nehru’s Machiavellian goading, to become his dynastic vote-bank by way of their innate communal outlook. Needless to say, making good of the Islamic leeway provided to them by Nehru and his dynastic successors, in what was supposedly Hindu India after the partition, they have been ever at increasing their numbers, exponentially that is, to become some fourteen per cent by now, which is more than the partition-inducing thirteen per cent. Though for all practical purposes, the Ghazwa-e-Hind of an Islamic dream may forever remain a pipe dream for them and the hoped-for second partition is a geographically untenable proposition, yet in time, the Muslim demand could be to declare the de facto Muslim mohalls into de jure Islamic areas, with sharia and all, within the boundaries of the Secular India. And given the Mullah-nurtured kafir hatred the Quran inculcates in them, who knows, their jihadi zeal may, at length, turn these into Gaza strips to kill the Hindu infidels in the adjoining habitats, a la Israeli Oct 7. Thankfully, though, the Hindus are becoming increasingly alive to the overtly Muslim and the covertly Christian demographic overturns around them as reflected in the recent constitution of the ‘High-Level Committee on Demographic Change’, HLCDC for short, by the Modi-sarkar, to comprehensively assess the ‘abnormal population shifts caused by illegal immigration and other unnatural causes.’ But the moot point is how things have been allowed to come to this pass, and the answer lies, as seen above, in the Hindu lacking of Shatrubodh (enemy awareness), which concept is slowly gaining the ‘right’ ground now. That is despite Chandmal Chopra’s 1985 Writ Petition to the Calcutta High Court seeking a ban on the Quran for its vile ayats on kafirs, in the wake of which Sita Ram Goel came up with his book, Calcutta Quran Petition, a year later. That this author self-published Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A critical appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian, ‘n more) in 2003, with seemingly none such in between, tells the Islam-naive story of the Hindu Semitic-unawareness. Needless to say, the Quran Petition was dismissed then and the same would be the case at any time in the future, unless India becomes a ‘dictatorial China’, politically, economically and militarily, to un-Islamize the Indian Muslims, as is the case with the Uyghur Muslims, without a whimper of a protest from the Islamic world. Whatever, it is true that since the late sixties, assorted anti-conversion laws have been in force in various non-Congress ruled Indian states to restrict religious conversions carried out through ‘force, fraud, or inducement’, but to no avail, as evidenced by the need to constitute the said high-level committee now. Nevertheless, it is seldom appreciated that religious propagation, read religious conversion, which the Indian Constitution naively treats as the citizens’ fundamental right, as detailed in the author’s article, Incongruities in Indian Constitution, per se, is a constitutional fraud perpetrated on the gullible Hindus. Thus, it should not be lost on anyone that the Indian Constitution, crafted by the Macaulay-educated babus of that era and adopted by the politically correct netas, engaged in chasing the Gandhian mirage of Hindu-Muslim bhaichara in India’s ganga-jamni desert, is a cruel double whammy on the long-denied natives. That’s not all, even as the Hindu-apathetic Nehru laid its philosophical foundation, its ‘architect’, Dr. BR Ambedkar, who swore not to die as a Hindu, and indeed passed away as a converted Buddhist, built the tome that set the anti-Sanatana tone, which for long fell on the deaf Hindu ears. Now that the pro-Semitic constitutional tune is becoming increasingly irritable to the jaag utha (woken up) Hindus, by the year 2047, it may as well be the case of the good riddance of this bad rubbish, giving cause for India to celebrate its hundredth year of independence then as Vikasit Bharat, in the true sense that is. However, as the Semitic cancer has already reached the second stage, ably aided by the constitutional provisions and largely abetted by the Nehruvian policies, it is imperative that it should be adequately cured at this stage, without further delay at that, to prevent it from growing into the incurable fourth stage. Here’s a prospective prescription for the same. Rx Diagnosed Semitic Stage II cancer in Indian body politic. Recommended procedures for its containment and cure. I) Preventive measures In propagating one’s religion, faith or creed, the following actions are deemed contrary to ‘public order, morality and health’, paramount in the constitution, and as such are treated as criminal acts punishable with due imprisonment and an appropriate fine as well as life-long prohibition of the violators from indulging in any form of religious propagation/activity whatsoever. i) Promoting one’s god, prophet, seer as the only valid god, prophet, seer, and picturing the gods, goddesses, deities of other religions, faiths, creeds, customs as false, fake or inferior for denouncing or demeaning the latter. ii) Positioning one’s religion, faith, covenant, creed, custom, convention as the only divinely true one and that the other religions, faiths, covenants, creeds, customs and conventions are false, fake or inferior. iii) Asserting that one’s religion, faith, covenant, beliefs, customs, and conventions are superior to those of others that lack the divine sanction/approval or are irrational. iv) Highlighting only the palliative aspects of one’s religion, faith, covenant, custom and conventions, all the while hiding the regressive and obscurantist features and characteristics of the same in ways to make the prospective converts perceive that the other side of the fence is greener. v) Luring the others into one’s religion or faith by theologically picturing the same as caste-free, contrary to its widespread prevalence among its converted peoples in the Indian social setting. vi) Seducing the socially, educationally and economically weaker sections of people as well as the emotionally vulnerable ones, of other religions, faiths and communities, to enter into one’s religion or faith with financial inducements, fake promises, alleged miracles and such dubious tactics. II) Curative methods In professing and practicing one’s religion, the following are deemed contrary to ‘public order, morality and health’ and hence treated as criminal acts, punishable under the law. i) No recitation, preaching, recounting, propagation of such verses or anecdotes from the holy scriptures, religious books, historical accounts that derogate other faiths and inculcate enmity towards the followers of the same, can be undertaken anywhere, even in religious places, under any circumstances whatsoever. a) Any violation of the above by ordained priests, religious propagators, social commentators, et al, entails imprisonment and fine besides a life-long ban on such to reassume the same or similar religious roles. ii) No preaching, teaching, lecturing or discoursing, rooted in the religious scriptures, tenets, books or historical accounts in the educational institutions of any denomination that induce disregard, hatred, enmity etc. towards other religions/ faiths or their adherents should be resorted to. a) Any violation of the above carries due imprisonment and permanent disablement of the involved teacher(s) from such an occupation. b) Should any such institution continue to indulge in this prohibited practice with different characters, then that facility would be disbanded and the members of its board or committee would be collectively and severally barred from establishing such or similar outfits to undertake such or similar activities for the rest of their lives. Note – Seek a second opinion from HLCDC, just in case.

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Great Nicobar: India’s Geoeconomic Gateway to the Indo‑Pacific

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