Lakshdeep - Not just about sand and snorkeling

 

Not just about sand and snorkeling

 

‘I am still in awe of the stunning beauty of its islands…’ began PM Modi’s social media post on 4 January. ‘I had the opportunity to interact with people in Agatti, Bangaram and Kavaratti… here are some glimpses, including aerial glimpses from Lakshadweep... for those who wish to embrace the adventurer in them, Lakshadweep has to be on your list. During my stay, I also tried snorkelling—what an exhilarating experience it was! And those early morning walks along the pristine beaches were also moments of pure bliss…’ concluded the gush about his two-day stay in Lakshadweep.

This was PM Modi’s first visit to Lakshadweep and the second by an Indian Prime Minister. In December 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi was PM, he had attended to official work and then spent a year-end vacation on Bangaram island. This visit had been raked up by Modi during his election campaign in 2019, alleging that Rajiv Gandhi had misused his office for a private holiday—charges which retired defence services officers and the then Lakshadweep administrator, Wajahat Habibullah, had firmly denied as disinformation.

“After the meeting, Rajiv Gandhi decided to stay on for a couple of days for a holiday with his family. After the meeting was over, Rajiv’s relatives, i.e., Sonia Gandhi’s sister and her husband, friends, including Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan came to Lakshadweep. None of them even went to Kavaratti. They took the helicopter services from Kochi to Bangaram, where they stayed at the guesthouse. If anyone has any doubt, they should check with Amitabh Bachchan,” Habibullah had said, adding that the group had paid for the helicopters flying in from Kochi. No bill had come to the administration.

PM Modi’s posts with photographs of him snorkelling in a life jacket prompted several uncharitable comments on social media and invited a vicious backlash. Snorkelling is basically swimming with a snorkel on in order to peek underwater, from the surface. To go deeper, you need scuba diving equipment, which includes oxygen. Both activities after the age of 60 are potentially risky. So, full marks to PM Modi for trying it out at his age.

However, the context for three deputy ministers in Maldives to mock the Indian Prime Minister and call him a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘clown’ is not clear, since the posts were deleted within hours after a social media shitstorm. All the three ministers were immediately ‘suspended’ and President Mohamed Muizzu, elected in October on an ‘India Out’ plank, swiftly sought to placate ruffled feathers by condemning the comments as highly irresponsible. The Maldivian government expressed its regrets and Maldivian trade bodies apologised to their Indian partners.

Although no formal statement was issued by the Government of India, the External Affairs Ministry summoned the Maldivian envoy to express its displeasure. The silence of the Indian government on equally, if not more, vicious campaigns against Maldives on social media reinforced the suspicion that it had official blessings, that it had been ‘orchestrated, organised and ordained’ even as the hashtag #BoycottMaldives began trending on X.  Media reports claimed that Indian tour operators and airlines had reported large scale cancellation of travel plans by Indians, allegedly depressing prices in hotels and resorts in Maldives.

Ironically, the Maldivian Tourism Authority’s website claims that Indians constituted 11 per cent of tourist arrivals in Maldives in 2022, virtually neck-and-neck with Russians, with Chinese tourists comprising 10 per cent. While Indians, Russians and the Chinese accounted for approximately 3.2 million tourists, a similar number was made up by the UK, other European countries and the US, combined.

On a five-day visit to China this week—his third overseas trip though he is yet to visit India, which was historically the first destination of Maldivian leaders—President Muizzu urged China to regain the number one slot and send more tourists to Maldives. He made no reference to India but his appeal came soon after the ‘Boycott Maldives’ call in India, widely perceived to have an official nod.

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Diplomats were dismayed. “Restrained reaction would’ve forced an obviously non-friendly government to make amends. Instead, social media onslaught, calls for isolation (of Maldives) have worsened relations and given China a leg up,” commented former Ambassador and commentator K.C. Singh.

In a scathing editorial, <Global Times>, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China commented, ‘Beijing has never asked Malé to reject New Delhi because of the conflicts between China and India, nor does it view cooperation between the Maldives and India as unfriendly or a threat... New Delhi should stay more open-minded as China’s cooperation with South Asian countries is not a zero-sum game’. The editorial went on to add that Muizzu’s decision to visit China before India ‘did not necessarily mean that he is pro-China and anti-India,’—it merely demonstrated that Muizzu was treating India with a ‘normal mind-set and steering the relationship between the Maldives and India to a normal state-state relationship’.

BJP leaders and the Indian foreign policy establishment greeted the criticism with stony silence. The editorial came as a bitter pill because just days earlier <Global Times> had carried a lavishly adulatory article on India, which was quoted profusely and with pride in India. Authored by Zhang Jiadong, director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at Fudan University, the article effusively praised India’s ‘great achievements’ in becoming one of the fastest growing major economies. His last two visits to India in four years, Ziadong wrote, showed that the ‘attitude toward Chinese scholars was more relaxed and moderate’ and India was strategically more confident.

The mishandling of Muizzu—who had indeed campaigned and won on a nationalist ‘India Out’ plank, and demanded post-election that India withdraw its military personnel from the islands—belied any such confidence or maturity.

Muizzu had met Modi in Dubai on the sidelines of COP-28 and had apparently reiterated the demand. The meeting, however, did little to break the ice. In December, Maldives decided to revoke an agreement with India for joint hydrographic surveys in Maldivian waters, signed during PM Modi’s visit to the islands in 2019. It was said to be a symbol of India-Maldives defence ties.

Also in December, Maldives skipped the latest meeting of the Colombo Security Conclave, opting to attend a meeting of a China-led forum. Whether India’s overbearing ‘big-brotherly’ bullying alienated the Maldivians or whether India took the Maldives for granted thereby creating an anti-India sentiment is hard to say.  The ‘Boycott Maldives’ campaign and reports that pro-India politicians in the islands, some of whom have already demanded Muizzu’s resignation, do not seem to be helping to cool the temperature and calm bilateral relations.

Anti-India sentiments are not new in Maldives. In 2018, Abdulla Yameen, the then President of Maldives, asked India to withdraw two of its helicopters and a Dornier aircraft, deployed by India for search and rescue operations in Maldives. Yameen insisted that if the helicopters and the aircraft were gifted to it, then their pilots must be from Maldives and not from India. Mutual distrust has also grown because of the BJP’s perceived anti-Muslim politics at home.

<The Hindu> reported meanwhile that speculation abounds in New Delhi of a Chinese plan to develop a naval base in the Maldives. ‘In 2018, China planned an ocean observatory in Makunudhoo Atoll, north of Malé—not far from India’s Lakshadweep Islands. Maldivian opposition leaders had then expressed reservations about the observatory’s potential military applications, including a provision for a submarine base,’ it reported. While there is no evidence yet of China having revived that proposal, the possibility cannot be discounted.

“I only hope that India-Maldives relations, which are too vital and strategic, recover lost equilibrium as soon as possible… These are not ties to be trifled with. They matter too much. To both countries. We are equal partners. And must stay that way. This is not (just) about sand and beaches,” weighed in former foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao.

‘Some places need to be left alone’

Pankaj Chaturvedi

 

He is no Christopher Columbus or Vasco d’Gama. A political appointee, a former BJP minister from Gujarat, Praful Khoda Patel nonetheless ‘discovered’ Lakshadweep in 2020 when he took over as Administrator. Ever since, he has been trying to develop Lakshadweep ‘like neighbouring Maldives, a renowned international tourist destination’.

He probably dreamed of a Hindu paradise on these islands where 93 per cent of the population happens to be Muslim. He withdrew beef and other kinds of meat from midday meals, an action endorsed by the Supreme Court which felt it was the government’s discretion to frame policy, and what did it matter anyway, as fish and eggs were still in plentiful supply.

He ordered coconut trees to be painted orange or saffron to ‘beautify’ them and proposed a ban on cow slaughter in a territory where there were no cows (except in dairy farms); a preventive detention law where there was no crime and took over the authority to acquire tribal land without paying compensation.

In the Lakshadweep islands, where the maximum road length is just 11 kms, he planned to widen the roads, allow exploitation of mineral resources and convert the islands into a hub for cement manufacture.

In another flash of brilliance, Mr Khoda also initiated a population-control scheme on the islands where the total fertility rate, according to the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-20) was 1.4, which is far behind the national average of 2.2. He also planned to allow sale and consumption of alcohol though locals favoured its sale only in resorts and hotels.

The ‘Goonda Act’ was used to arrest dissenters like Hussain Manikfan for a Facebook post in which he complained about the lack of transport between the mainland and the islands. His FB post read: ‘Only 2 of the 7 ships are running and people are going through hell. In a skewed logic, this will be a justification for not requiring more ships’.

The brouhaha that followed PM Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep on 2–3 January, 2024 would have people believe that the islands have been neglected over the last 70 years. But every home in the islands has rainwater harvesting facilities and solar power substantially covers the islanders’ electricity needs. All islands are connected by helicopter service since 1986, and high-speed passenger boats were purchased in the 1990s. The National Institute of Oceanography helped redesign tripods ensuring piped water supply from the fresh water lens that, in every coral island, floats on the saline underground seawater.

Minicoy boasted one of the country’s first Navodaya Vidyalayas and Kadmat has a degree college. Indeed, every island had a computer by 1990, recalls the then Administrator, Wajahat Habibullah.

Ignoring the warnings of marine biologists, the Lakshadweep administration held an investors’ meet in New Delhi and is pressing ahead with the construction of beach and lagoon villas. A tender notice inviting proposals from developers for building 370 such villas using the design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) model on a public private partnership (PPP) basis on Minicoy, Kadmat and Suheli islands was issued. On 4 January, 2024, the day PM Modi ended his visit to the islands, the Lakshadweep Collector acquired 1.9258 hectares of land belonging to 218 residents for construction of a beach road.

Lakshadweep’s environmental balance is shaken by land erosion, cyclones and rising water temperatures along the coast. This is exacerbated by fishing permission granted to large trawlers. S. Abhilash of the Department of Meteorology, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) says, “These islands are extremely sensitive. The sea here remains rough throughout the year. In addition to stormy waves, changing ocean currents and bleaching of coral reefs, large-scale construction will only worsen the situation.”

Loveleen Arun, a veteran of the travel trade, points out, “while Maldives is spread across an area of 298 sq km, Lakshadweep’s is just 32 sq km. In comparison, Andaman Island is 6000+ sq km. The coral reefs around the Lakshadweep islands are already bleaching or dying. So please think twice before trying to promote it as the next Maldives. Some places need to be left alone.”  Journalist Sagarika Ghose posted a reality check: ‘Maldives has around 170 top class resorts, & 900 guest houses, each resort on an island. Lakshwadweep has a handful, none remotely close to Five Star category’.

A cluster of 32 islands with a population of 71 thousand, Lakshwadeep has been protected and preserved till now with good reason. Mr Khoda and his political masters have different ideas and would like to turn it into a concrete nightmare and a real estate player’s wet dream.