The Great Nicobar Project: When Development Bypasses Indigenous Rights
The Great Nicobar Project shows how easily indigenous consent can be reduced to paperwork. This piece argues that for the Shompen, who live in voluntary isolation and the Nicobarese, whose consent was withdrawn, development without genuine consent becomes a question of survival.
Introduction
On 6 May 2026, the Calcutta High Court heard a petition challenging the consent obtained for the Great Nicobar Island Project (‘GNI Project’). The case has renewed attention to how India understands “consent” in development - as an item in the clearance checklist rather than as an expression of indigenous self-determination.
The project is envisioned as a maritime and air connectivity hub, comprising a transhipment port, airport, power plant and township. It is proposed on an island home to 237 Shompen (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (‘PVTG’)) and 1,094 Nicobarese (Scheduled Tribes (‘ST’)). For both communities, livelihood, culture and spiritual identity are inseparable from their ancestral land.
In this context, self-determination is not an abstract principle. It is the right of indigenous peoples to control their land, culture and resources. The GNI case shows how, despite formal recognition of autonomy and self-determination, indigenous communities remain structurally excluded from decisions that determine their survival as distinct peoples.
Missing Consent and Habitat Rights
The threat to indigenous rights in the GNI Project is not limited to its outcome. Instead, it is built into the way the project has been designed and approved.
The proposal to offset the de-notification of Tribal Reserve land by re-notifying land elsewhere is flawed. It assumes that Tribal Reserve land is fungible, ignoring that the land being de‑notified is the Shompen’s foraging and habitation ground. For a PVTG whose way of life depends on an ecologically specific habitat, “land-for-land” substitution empties protection of its substance. This threatens the Shompen’s habitat rights as PVTGs under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (‘FRA’) and undermines the protective framework of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956 and the Policy on Shompen Tribe of Great Nicobar Island, 2015. Habitat rights secure not just physical territory but the ecological and cultural conditions that allow a community’s relationship with land to continue over time.
FPIC as Procedural Self-Determination
The consent process for diversion of land illustrates a second, related failure. The Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar Islands initially issued a no‑objection certificate for the Nicobarese, but later withdrew it, stating that complete information regarding the land and project impacts had not been disclosed. For the Shompen, consent was not taken from the community at all; it was routed through persons settled on land traditionally belonging to them.
This strikes at the core of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (‘FPIC’). FPIC is the procedural arm of self‑determination. It requires that affected indigenous communities receive full information, have sufficient time and freedom to deliberate and retain the authority to agree, refuse, or agree subject to conditions. Content based on incomplete disclosure, not granted by the community itself, or later withdrawn, cannot satisfy FPIC.
The Shompen live in voluntary isolation and do not speak or understand the language in which the State conducts its consent processes. Para 14(iv) of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Briefing Document on Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact requires decisions affecting peoples in isolation to proceed by “assuming non-consent” and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Report further requires consultation standards to respect their choice to remain isolated.
In India, FPIC is not codified in a single statute, but its elements appear across the constitutional and statutory framework: the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution of India (‘Constitution’), the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, and the FRA. Internationally, FPIC and habitat rights draw strength from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), which affirm that indigenous peoples must give free and informed consent to projects affecting their lands and resources.
The Human Rights Cost of Development
Though the GNI Project is framed as a strategic economic zone, its human rights costs are systemic, not incidental. NITI Aayog and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation estimate that the Nicobar Islands’ population could reach 350,000 people by 2050 - an increase of 4,000%. Such heightened contact to outsiders poses particular risks for the Shompen, including epidemics, human safaris, dependency on outsiders, sexual harassment, alcoholism and accidents.
Genocide scholar Dr. Mark Levene has warned that the project could lead to the Shompen’s inevitable destruction. The project’s own Environmental Impact Assessment cautions that infections among the Shompen tribes could result in the extinction of the entire community. The issue, therefore, is not only displacement, but whether the ecological and social conditions that sustain these communities as distinct peoples will be irreversibly altered.
These concerns implicate the rights to life, health, culture and self‑determination under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966. Jurisprudence in cases such as Saramaka People v. Suriname and Endorois Welfare Council v. Kenya recognises that indigenous communities hold collective rights to territory, identity and cultural survival.
Reclaiming Community Decision Making
As the matter awaits final adjudication, the courts must correct a deeper structural flaw - India’s tendency to treat FPIC as a clearance requirement instead of as the procedural expression of indigenous self‑determination. When consent is reduced to an approval letter, legal scrutiny only focuses on whether a document exists.
Whereas, a self‑determination‑consistent consent model would require independent verification of FPIC; direct engagement with affected communities; consent by the “community as a whole” and consent to be treated as an ongoing requirement throughout the project cycle, not a one‑time signature.
Beyond judicial review, governments and companies must design projects embedding FPIC and habitat protection. If enforced rigorously, these safeguards can reorient India’s development model from clearance‑driven decision making to a human‑rights‑based approach grounded in indigenous self‑determination.
Bringing the Circle Back: Self Determination, PVTGs and Habitat
For the Shompen, as a PVTG, the stakes are even higher. Structural barriers of language and access to institutions make their ability to claim their rights, fragile. Any consent process affecting their habitat must therefore be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny, because defective FPIC in this context threatens not only procedural fairness, but the community’s survival and self-governance.
To give effect to self-determination, the courts should direct a fresh rights‑settlement and consent process, independent verification of impacts on PVTG habitat and meaningful consultation with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. A rights‑based proportionality analysis would compel the State to show that the project is legally authorised, pursues a legitimate aim, adopts the least rights‑restrictive alternative and does not impose a disproportionate burden on PVTG survival and tribal autonomy.
In closing, the GNI Project is a test of whether India will treat indigenous self‑determination as the source from which FPIC, habitat rights and PVTG protections flow or continue to treat these rights as dispensable hurdles on the path to development.
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