India’s ‘unsinkable carrier’ near South-east Asia – and its China calculation

Located 40 nautical miles from the Malacca Strait choke point, the International Container Transhipment Port at Great Nicobar’s Galathea Bay is the centrepiece of New Delhi’s next grand plan – the Great Nicobar Project.

It is pitched potentially as a “pivotal hub in global shipping by drawing cargo from major ports across the region while reducing logistics costs, improving maritime security and strengthening India’s role in global trade”.

The US$10 billion (S$12.8 billion) project sits at India’s southern extremity, on an island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago roughly 1,400km from the Indian mainland and just north of Sumatra. It’s described as “turning geography into strength”, combining a logistics build-out with maritime security.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party puts it more plainly. Posts from its X account suggest that it is equally about countering China’s rising presence in the neighbourhood. A retired Indian admiral refers to the project as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier on permanent station”.

It’s a telling sign that India is doubling down on strategic capabilities and infrastructure in this part of the world. Behind such an ambitious move lies an immediate calculation.

New Delhi was caught unawares by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to its west. Now, as it deals with the debilitating impact of the Iran war on its economy, it is determined to ensure that something similar does not take place to its east.

Strategic waters

The rationale was laid out in a government press note issued on May 1.

“India’s ports lack deep water berths for large ships,” it said, noting the 20m natural water depth in Galathea Bay. “Because of this, cargo is routed through Colombo and Singapore. India loses substantial revenue as a result. Countries like Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka are already building deep water facilities to capture this trade.”  

The Hormuz blockade, on account of which India is suffering energy shortages and mounting pump and cooking gas prices, has reminded New Delhi how vulnerable global trade is to maritime choke points – and why being in a position to influence the Strait of Malacca, considered the world’s largest maritime choke point by trade volume, is important not only for its own security, but for regional influence.

Aside from the trans-shipment terminal on Galathea Bay which is slated to have a capacity of 14.2 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units), or about a third of the container volume Singapore handled in 2025, the project will have a greenfield international airport built to handle 4,000 peak-hour passengers, and a city built on more than 160 sq km of land – or slightly larger than the north region of Singapore. As for the planned dual-use international airport, the Andaman and Nicobar administration points out that Great Nicobar is close to international tourist destinations like Phuket Island and Langkawi Island.

While the airport in the administrative capital of Port Blair currently handles approximately 1.8 million passengers annually, the new airport is expected to handle at least one million passengers when it opens and “grow to approximately 10 million passengers per year thereafter.” 

Military presence

The idea to develop the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a federally administered territory, is not new. In the mid-1980s, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi thought the islands could potentially be turned into a free port, and home for thousands of ethnic Indians thrown out of Idi Amin’s Uganda. 

Around the same time, India also considered moving a squadron of Jaguar fighter-bombers from their base in Pune, Western India, to the then fledgling air force base on Car Nicobar island – north of Great Nicobar.

Both plans were shelved at the time; water shortages and the fragility of the ecosystem made it plain that the islands could not possibly tolerate a significant increase in population. As for the idea to base the Jaguars on the Nicobars, it was shelved to avoid raising worries about Indian intentions with key neighbours such as Indonesia and Myanmar.

Since the early plans were mooted and shelved, India’s economy has expanded significantly while the security situation around its neighbourhood has deteriorated. Indeed, it is often commonplace for some South-east Asian nations to press India to adopt a more robust security profile in the region.

New Delhi has responded by building a string of military facilities up and down the Andaman chain of islands. For instance, Great Nicobar’s Campbell Bay already hosts INS Baaz, a naval air station that overlooks the Strait of Malacca and the Six Degree Channel, a key passage between the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean.

Aside from unmanned aerial vehicles, the Indian navy has positioned the advanced P-8i maritime patrol aircraft on Baaz. Next-door Car Nicobar hosts a major air force base where advanced Sukhois and C-130 transporters have been frequently spotted operating into. 

Now, the infrastructure-minded Modi government is turning to fix things on the logistics side. 

India’s existing trans-shipment points – Mundra in Gujarat, and Vallarpadam and Vizhinjam in Kerala – are all on the Arabian Sea-facing western coastline and the east coast could use some help. Along that coast after all is India’s fastest-growing province, Tamil Nadu, which is clocking double-digit economic expansion and has emerged as a production centre for global companies such as Apple and Hyundai. So too on the east coast is Odisha, which is another fast-developing state.

The challenges

Critics say each of these targets is too ambitious. In tourism, for instance, they point out that in late 2024, Air Asia inaugurated the first direct flights from South-east Asia into Port Blair, but shut down the service after a few months because of poor demand.

Environmentalists have raised alarm about the damage to precious biodiversity, and about the future of the remaining few hundred tribespeople whose history dates back to extreme antiquity. (The Shompens of Great Nicobar – classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group – are thought to be descendants of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who live in isolation and have a unique language and culture.) 

The eminent anthropologist Vishvajit Pandya, who has worked closely with the islands’ dwindling tribals, complains of large-scale tree-felling to make room for the port and township, and “no clear government strategy”.   

“Earlier, they used the defence-strategic rationale for developing Great Nicobar,” he told me. “If that is so, why have a plan to bring in thousands of tourists?”

The administration said these concerns are being adequately addressed. Displacement of tribals will be minimal, and while some felling of trees is inevitable – less than 2 per cent of forest cover – there will be compensatory afforestation. “The project is perhaps a few months late, but it is on full speed,” said a very senior figure in the Andaman and Nicobar administration. “Every concern is being addressed, and we are moving in a most responsible fashion. The National Green Tribunal has endorsed our plans.” 

Soon, he added, Requests For Proposals will go out, and once the winning bidders are picked “we want to complete the port and airport by 2035, while the overall project has a 30-year outlook. The Hormuz situation has given us added incentive to speed things up”.

Indian geologists place the Andaman and Nicobars in Seismic Zone V, the highest risk category. Great Nicobar is close to Banda Aceh, and seismologists say the region follows a relentless pattern of tectonic strain build-up and release and is currently in an inter-seismic period. That situation, they say, contrasts with the stable geology of port cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

I put this fact to the senior figure in the Andaman administration.

“Thirteen other nations rank higher in earthquake frequency including Japan, China and Indonesia and all of them continue to grow, build and host hundreds of millions of people,” he responded.

“Parts of North Bihar, Uttarakhand and Gujarat are also in Seismic Zone V, but none of them have halted development. It is what it is.”

Great Nicobar may be seismically uncertain and environmentally contested. And even though it’s decades from completion, the calculation driving it is clear enough. India has learnt, at some painful economic cost, what it means to be exposed in waters it does not control. It does not intend to learn that lesson twice.