Context

• The proposal to build a major transshipment port at Galathea Bay in Great Nicobar has been heralded as a symbol of India’s maritime resurgence.
• Supporters claim it will transform the country into a regional hub for trade and security, reducing dependence on foreign ports such as Colombo and Singapore.
• Behind this vision lies a powerful appeal to national ambition and strategic pride. Yet beneath the rhetoric of progress and self-reliance, the project rests on fragile economic foundations and faces formidable geographical and logistical challenges.
• Its promise of prosperity and influence, when examined closely, begins to dissolve into illusion.

Critique of Great Nicobar Project

• Overstated Advantages and Structural Flaws
  • The rationale behind the Great Nicobar port rests on the assumption that new infrastructure automatically attracts maritime traffic.
  • This assumption has already been disproven by India’s own experience with Vallarpadam Port in Kerala, which failed to draw transshipment business despite significant investment.
  • Successful hubs depend on far more than capacity, they thrive on network connectivity, feeder links, stable cargo bases, and long-term carrier loyalty.
  • These factors develop over years of commercial integration and cannot be built overnight.
  • Galathea Bay lacks nearly all of these preconditions. It has no industrial hinterland, no urban or logistics base, and no nearby manufacturing zone to generate cargo.
  • Every container would need to be shipped in and out, creating dependence on costly feeder services that do not yet exist.
  • Geography further compounds the problem. The site lies about 1,200 kilometres from the Indian mainland, too remote to sustain efficient or profitable operations.
• Strategic Ambiguities and Misplaced Priorities
  • Supporters have often sought refuge in the argument of strategic necessity.
  • Establishing a strong presence in Great Nicobar, they suggest, would enhance India’s surveillance capacity and strengthen its deterrence posture in the eastern Indian Ocean.
  • Yet India already maintains an active naval base there, INS Baaz, which fulfils precisely these objectives.
  • The addition of a commercial port adds little to military readiness while introducing a range of logistical and environmental complications.
  • If strategic expansion is the real goal, it should be pursued openly and through dedicated defence channels rather than masked as a commercial enterprise.
  • The blending of military and economic justifications risks diluting both, turning strategy into rhetoric and development into pretext.
• The Myth of a Seamless Maritime Arc
  • Another central claim envisions Great Nicobar forming part of a triad of new ports, alongside Vizhinjam in Kerala and Vadhavan in Maharashtra, that together would create a “seamless maritime arc.”
  • This vision collapses under scrutiny. Each of these ports occupies a distinct commercial environment.
  • Vizhinjam benefits from its proximity to international shipping lanes and may plausibly attract some traffic from Colombo through improved efficiency.
  • Vadhavan, situated near industrial hubs on the western coast, has a natural economic hinterland.
• Great Nicobar, by contrast, is cut off from industrial corridors and shipping networks, with no organic cargo base to sustain continuous operations.
• Treating it as the keystone of an integrated maritime system ignores the geographical and economic realities that determine how ports actually function.

A Cautionary Lesson in Misplaced Ambition

• The Great Nicobar project exemplifies how grand visions of national transformation can falter when detached from economic and logistical reality.
• Its geographic isolation, lack of connectivity, and fragile commercial logic make it ill-suited to the role envisioned for it.
• A world-class terminal with few takers will generate neither development nor influence; it will instead serve as a monument to misplaced ambition.
• Infrastructure, no matter how modern, cannot substitute for an ecosystem of trade networks, industry linkages, and operational efficiency.

Conclusion

• The vision of Great Nicobar as a gateway to India’s maritime dominance rests on a seductive but unsound logic.
• Building capacity does not guarantee connectivity; strategic ambition cannot override structural geography.
• Sustainable maritime growth demands coordination between infrastructure, industry, and environment, not isolated projects driven by symbolism.
• The Great Nicobar port, far from representing progress, risks becoming a cautionary tale of how development divorced from context can undermine the very goals it seeks to achieve.