Excerpt from The Straight Times
With palm-fringed beaches, turquoise seas and coral reefs, it is easy to see the appeal of India’s Lakshadweep islands. But as the government pushes plans to develop the remote archipelago as a tourist hub, some islanders fear they could lose everything.
Anger has erupted over proposals that could give officials powers to remove or relocate residents to make way for tourism, luxury housing and deep sea mining projects in the islands, which lie 500km off India’s south-western coast.
“For generations we have lived quiet lives, rarely protesting policies created in the mainland… But if they take away my land and home, where will we all go?” fisherman Sakariya, who uses one name, said by phone.
Like many local fishermen, his only asset is the family home his grandfather built on a roughly 93 sq m plot of land near the beach, in the island capital of Kavaratti.
“This is not a big city where people can be relocated nearby. For us, it will probably mean having to move to the mainland. How can we allow anyone to take our homes away?,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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