Putting Andaman & Nicobar on railway map
The Railway Ministry's decision to roll out the first railway line in the Union Territory of Andaman & Nicobar Islands is welcome. This will be crucial from both perspectives of enhancing tourism potential and security. It will provide a new line of connectivity to the islanders, which will finally bring the archipelago on the rail map of the nation. The line will join the island's capital Port Blair and Diglipur on the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. As it is going to be a 240-kilometre long broad-gauge line, it will certainly facilitate better movement of people, goods and services, which the islanders were deprived of for decades. The Union Government must see to it that since it is a joint project between the railways and the Union Territory Administration, it should not be delayed, citing deadlocks between the two Governments. Also, from the very beginning, issues related to loss and profit of carrying out such a critical project should be sorted as there may not be much of a commercial weight age of the venture. Successive establishments in New Delhi should have rolled back its age-old colonial attitude towards the island long back. Its rich reservoir of mineral resources and tourism potential could have translated the Union Territory into an attractive destination for global investors and tourists simultaneously. While opening the island for such modern communication networks like the railways, the local Government should make all plans, programmes and policies ready for the safety of a number of indigenous tribes, rare animals and marine lives living across the territory. The fallouts of the modern developmental process needs to be minimised in places like Andaman & Nicobar. Once it is exposed to all sorts of commercial activities, the islanders may lose their exclusive appeal and existence, which is already on the rise.
However, experts are tight-lipped on the very commercial aspects of the new railway link. Since the construction of the Andaman Trunk Road in 1971 by the Government of India, some of the tribes of the island such as Jarawas and the Great Andamanese are facing extreme threats for their survival. In fact, this road was built by cutting the Jarawa tribal's land in half. Thus, the Jarawas became susceptible to disease, tourism and poachers. They are on a fast road to extinction. They are largely impacted by massive coomercial activities and tourism. Despite a Supreme Court order in 2013, banning all tourist activities near Jarwas territory and for the creation of a buffer zone around the Jarwas reserve, where no business operations will be allowed, nothing happened so far as more than 200 tour companies still operate there. Now, the environmentalists and activists fear that the new mode of transportation may add to the misery of the islanders, despite the project having huge potential for their development. Therefore, all that the Government can do is to ensure the survival of the indigenous people, while unleashing a new ray of hope to the island's facelift.