Manikandan Abimanyu
Ph.D. Student, Department of Anthropology
Northwestern University
To all those activists, scientists, and settlers of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, including myself, the National Green Tribunal’s special bench ruling that it did not find “any good ground” to interfere with the environmental clearance granted to the Rs 81,000 crore state-funded Great Nicobar mega infrastructure project was heartbreaking news (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ngt-clears-nicobar-mega-project-cites-adequate-safeguards-in-environmental-nod-10534574/).
The ‘development’ project aims to divert a massive 130 sq km of forest land and the felling of almost a million trees, posing a direct threat to its inter-species ecosystem. Ecologists and social scientists call this project an ecocide, which will have a catastrophic impact on the islands’ environment.
The recurrence of freshwater crises in Port Blair (Sri Vijayapuram), the capital city, serves as a stark reminder of the island’s main environmental failure. While residents blame crumbling infrastructure and a lack of capacity-building initiatives, the government attributes the water shortage to climate change.
However, the island’s present-day water insecurity has historical roots, and we need to examine its colonial-era ecological transformation to understand the causes of current scarcity.
History tends to repeat itself, and as islanders, we must protect our future by avoiding the mistakes of the British colonials. So, this brings us to the question: Was there stable access to water for the indigenous communities before the penal colony was established? The answer is Yes! Was there sufficient access to and availability of water during the penal colony period? No!! Let’s dig into what went wrong after the British arrived in the Islands.
My archaeological survey records and archival research at Port Blair (Sri Vijayapuram) last summer provide a lens through which we can examine some facts and understand this case.
Before the British arrived in the 1790s, the Andamanese had ample water for their sustainable everyday life. Archaeological excavations conducted by eminent archaeologist Zarine Cooper in the 1980s found evidence of shell middens in the South Andaman’s Chouldhari region, suggesting that the Andamanese lived within a 1km radius of freshwater springs and streams; their longer periods of settlement in the region indicate, in Cooper’s words, “availability of ample sustenance throughout the year.”
Similarly, the documentary evidence from Archibald Blair’s (one of the first British mariner to survey the Andaman Islands in 1788) report to the East India Company points out that “Port Andaman” is supplied with freshwater, but he also suggests that, despite ample rainfall during the monsoon season, it might be necessary to construct “reservoirs” to collect and store water in the dry seasons.
Blair’s account is vital because it not only describes the availability of water but also the need for the establishment of water infrastructure that is necessary for the colonization of the islands. This is a clear indication that the island’s geological and topographical conditions may not naturally support stable water security for a large settlement, or, for that matter, any big demographic change.
However, the British establishment of the penal colony in 1858 and the exponential rise of the convict population and self-supporting villages thereafter saw a massive deforestation. The archaeological mapping of water infrastructure, such as water wells and ponds across barracks in Viper Island’s Chain Gang Jail and Chatham sawmill, the aqueduct at Panighat, a reservoir at Hope Town Village, and the construction of the Dhanikhari dam, provides evidence for rising water insecurity in the evolving industrial prison complex system in the islands in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Moreover, archival records from this period suggest that to control deaths from waterborne diseases in the settlements, the British installed water distillation plants on Ross Island and boilers in the barracks of both male and female prisoners. These documents further confirm the prevailing water insecurity, including sanitation issues.
All these landscape changes through felling trees for lumbering and changes in the hydro social relations during the penal colony era brought about ecological suicide for the island’s environment and the indigenous population, which has a lasting impact.
Although climate change and underinvestment in infrastructure cannot be overlooked in the contemporary freshwater crisis, the massive deforestation undertaken by the post-colonial government contributes to it. The post-colonial Indian government’s strategic policies, tourism development, and settler colonialism paved the way for an exponential rise in inward migration, making the islands unsustainable in meeting everyday water demands, leading to chronic water insecurity in the islands.
The Great Nicobar Project is one such example of the colonial ideologies being reproduced in the islands. Learning from the historical colonial exploitation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ forested landscape and the use of convict labor for extraction serves as a stark reminder of the need to protect the islands’ biodiversity to ensure stable water security.