By Sanjay Balan
There are moments in a territory’s life when a decision taken for convenience—or arithmetic—quietly rewires its politics and society. For the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, two such moves in the 2000s did exactly that: (1) replacing the Local Certificate (LC) framework with an OBC categorisation; and (2) carving a second district—North & Middle Andaman—in 2006. Both were politically easy. Both were socially and institutionally costly.
1) OBC in place of LC: an imported template for a society that had moved beyond it
Our society was not arranged on rigid lines. It was forged by settlers, freedom-fighters’ families, ex-convicts, and displaced people from East Pakistan—communities that endured harsh treatment under the British and a far crueller Japanese regime. Over decades, these diverse strands produced a class-light, cohesive island community—remarkably close to the egalitarian ideal the Constitution dreamt of.
The LC system recognised that reality. It worked as a domicile-based protection, and reservation in higher education proved an excellent instrument of upliftment. When the courts flagged LC for lack of a statutory basis, the logical step was to pass a domicile law giving LC legal teeth—not to import a mainland classification.
Instead, around 2005–06, we migrated to OBC categorisation—a framework designed for very different social conditions. At the time, one serious objection was formally recorded: not against affirmative action, but against using OBC labels here. It urged a domicile-based legal framework for LC and cautioned that the new regime would, over time, distort our social fabric.
That caution has aged well. What we see now is subtle but corrosive: claims to “backward” status have expanded, as other communities argue they face similar disadvantages and seek inclusion. The result is a competitive race for recognition that steadily hollows out the shared islander identity LC once protected. The better course always existed: codify domicile in law, deepen the proven higher-education pathway, and address unemployment through local preference that is constitutional, transparent, and tailored to island realities.
2) A second district without a second thought
North & Middle Andaman was developing at par with the rest of the erstwhile Andaman district. The only case advanced for bifurcation was the long geographic stretch and remoteness. Yet the district was created in 2006 despite a population base that did not—and even today does not—justify a full parallel establishment.
Meanwhile, the very premise has eroded. The Andaman Trunk Road upgrades, better ferry/bridge connectivity, and the shift to online service delivery have steadily shrunk the “remoteness” argument. Governance today is far less about physical distance and far more about digital access and timely decisions.
Two consequences follow:
First, fiscal: duplicate district establishments—offices, residences, line-department outposts—create recurring overheads in a resource-scarce UT. Every rupee locked in parallel administration is a rupee not building roads, clinics, classrooms, or livelihoods.
Second, political: the split weakened the people’s voice. The islands had, through the Andaman & Nicobar (Panchayats) Regulation, 1994, nurtured a strong Zilla Parishad at the apex. Bifurcation—combined with the earlier abolition of the Pradesh Parishad—fragmented representation and shrank the platform for territory-wide debate. What we live with now is a political vacuum that everybody senses and nobody benefits from.
The road back to common sense
Both choices share the same flaw: imported templates applied to island realities. LC needed law; it got a label. Decentralisation needed empowered local democracy; it got duplicated bureaucracy. The outcome is slower, more expensive development and a thinner public sphere.
The fix is specific and doable:
Pass a domicile law that restores the Local Certificate with legal backing, protects opportunity for genuine islanders, and keeps pathways like higher-education reservation focused and effective.
Order a time-bound review of the 2006 bifurcation, using current population, service-delivery data, and a full cost-of-administration analysis. If the district fails a cost-benefit test, rationalise—and route the savings to health, secondary education, and rural connectivity.
Re-empower the island-wide forum of local democracy by strengthening the Zilla Parishad with real financial and functional autonomy.
For decades, the islands quietly achieved what many societies aspire to: a cohesive, upward-moving, class-light community driven by shared effort rather than labels. Our task now is not to chase other people’s templates but to legally restore our own.