Jirkatang, India. Bollywood music blares from a line of food stalls serving tourists outside the entrance to a thickly-forested tribal reserve on India’s far-flung Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Beyond the barrier patrolled by police, a few hundreds members of the Jarawa tribe hunt the lush rainforest for turtles and pigs and shoot fish with bows and arrows, largely unseen and untouched by the outside world.

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government seeks to accelerate development on the islands to promote its military, trade and tourism, preserving the pristine environment and handful of unique tribes is likely to get harder.

“The islands are fragile, they are in a seismically active zone not far from Indonesia’s Aceh coast,” said Pankaj Sekhsaria of Indian environmental group Kalpavriksh.

“Above all, they are home to indigenous tribes. This is their land, their history. There are serious concerns about the impact of tourists … If history is any indication, interaction between our world and their world has proved damaging for them.”

Tourism is only part of New Delhi’s vision for the Indian Ocean islands. Lying on a busy shipping route between mainland India and southeast Asia, they are seen as ideal for extending India’s economic and military reach.

With that in mind, Modi’s government is determined to push harder than previous administrations to develop the islands, while at the same time protecting tribes and landscapes.

“The support we have got from the central government over the last year has been phenomenal. They want things to happen,” A.K. Singh, lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and India’s top official there, told Reuters.

“We want comprehensive development of the islands and its people while protecting the interests of the tribes as well as the environment. Ours is a transparent, deliberate policy. There is nothing to hide.”

To integrate or isolate?

The dark-skinned Jarawas, numbering around 400 and one of six tribes believed to have lived on the islands for up to 55,000 years, refused until recently to have any contact with the outside world.

“There are two schools of thought. One is to protect and preserve their cultural identity and avoid inter-mingling with the outside world,” said D.M. Shukla, the islands’ tribal welfare secretary.

“The other is to mainstream them into the outside world so that they enjoy the fruits of the development.”

The latter argument is gaining momentum, with government officials saying economic development must not be held back.

Boosting tourism and other industries is not easy in a territory where over 90 percent of land is off-limits forest.

But already the military is lengthening runways at airfields in the north and south of an archipelago that generals believe is a key but long-neglected outpost to counter the Chinese navy’s thrust into the Indian Ocean.

The civilian administration, energised by Modi’s push to boost development, plans direct air links to Southeast Asia, an undersea cable to improve communications and a free port area.

State carrier Air India will begin flights this year between the Andaman capital Port Blair and Thailand’s Phuket, which gets more tourists than all of India put together, according to island officials.

“If we get even a fraction of that traffic to our beaches, it would transform the islands,” said the islands’ chief secretary Anand Prakash.

A more ambitious plan to build a port in Great Nicobar island near the mouth of the Strait of Malacca, through which some 60,000 ships pass annually, is on hold because it would need vast amounts of land in an ecologically sensitive belt, Prakash added.

‘Dole-based economy’

Vivek Rae, former chief secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, said it was unrealistic to reserve 1,000 square km of forest for 400-odd Jarawas.

“While it is nobody’s case that the entire land mass should be denuded of forest cover and the tribes relegated to the dustbin of history, there is surely a compelling case for clearing up some of the land for exploiting the economic and strategic potential of these islands,” he wrote in India Today.

Some business leaders on the archipelago agree.

“Ours is a dole-based economy. Everything is subsidised, from our food to our travel to the mainland. How sustainable is that?” said Mohammad Jadwet, of the Jadwet Trading Company, one of the islands’ oldest enterprises.

Proposed measures will put Delhi on a collision course with environmentalists and human rights groups who have long argued that the archipelago of 556 islands, 37 of which are inhabited, should be left undisturbed.

The dark green islands dotting an azure sea boast bird, reptile and butterfly species found nowhere else, as well as some of the finest corals in the world, Sekhsaria said.

At Jirkatang, tourists travel in convoy with police cars at the front and back, and no photography or contact with tribes is allowed in order to protect them.

But occasionally images are captured and food thrown to tribe members, and Survival International has called for the main road through the Jarawa reserve to be closed to tourists. It calls their activity there “human safaris.”

Reuters

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New Delhi. India’s army conducted a military operation against separatist guerrillas near the border with Myanmar on Tuesday, it said, days after 20 of its soldiers were killed in the deadliest attack on security forces in the remote area in two decades.

The army said in a statement it had engaged with two groups of militants along the border and inflicted “significant casualties.”

Indian television channels said special forces carried out “surgical strikes” inside Myanmar where the guerrillas had fled to, something that was not confirmed by the army.

The operation took place in the Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur, where the soldiers were killed last week in an ambush on their convoy. The army said it had received intelligence that the guerrillas were plotting further ambushes.

India’s remote northeast is home to dozens of insurgent groups, fighting for either greater autonomy or secession. For decades, the army has been deployed to the area that has borders with China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan but it has not been known to carry out cross-border raids.

The army said it was in communication with Myanmar authorities regarding its operations against the guerrillas. “There is a history of close cooperation between the two militaries,” it said, adding it would firmly deal with any threat to India’s security.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought better relations with neighbors to help fight cross-border terrorism and build tighter economic links. But his administration has also repeatedly said it would deal with militants firmly.

Reuters

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Kutupalong, Bangladesh. More than 20 years after the first wave of Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar, fear is spreading through the sweltering camps of mud houses where they found shelter in southern Bangladesh that they will soon be on the move again.

The refugees worry the Bangladesh government wants them out of sight, perhaps to one of its islands in the Bay of Bengal, as the two countries row over what to do with a stateless minority whose search for security is driving a regional migrant crisis.

“This is home for us now, it is peaceful here.” said Nur Alam, who crossed the Naf river that separates the two countries in a tiny boat in 1991. “We are not sure we will be safe elsewhere.”

About 33,000 men, women and children live crammed into two dilapidated camps in the villages of Kutupalong and Nayapara, near the Myanmar border, that are supported by the United Nations and the Bangladesh government. They are the lucky ones.

There are anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 more Rohingyas in nearby camps and hills whom the government will not even recognize as temporary refugees lest it weaken its case to send them back to Myanmar, where they say they face persecution.

H.T. Imam, political adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said the presence of so many foreigners without proper identity documents or work was causing problems for local people and hindering development.

“The Rohingya are the citizens of Myanmar and they must go back,” he said. “We feel for them, but we are unable to host them any longer.”

International focus on the festering plight of the Rohingya has sharpened in recent weeks as more than 4,000 migrants have washed up in rickety boats on the shores of Southeast Asia.

The migrants, mostly Rohingyas but also Bangladeshis escaping poverty, were abandoned at sea by people smugglers after Thailand launched a crackdown on gangs trafficking their human cargo across its southern border with Malaysia.

Not welcome

Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated countries of 160 million people, is concerned that if it kept accepting fellow Muslims from Myanmar it would only encourage the flow across its border.

Myanmar does not recognize its estimated 1.1 million Rohingya population as citizens, even though many have lived for generations in its western Rakhine state. The government refers to them as “Bengalis” and considers them illegal immigrants.

Mohammad Shah Kamal, secretary to Bangladesh’s ministry of disaster management and relief, said he had proposed finding alternative space for the camps, but the land ministry could not find any.

Local media have reported that the government was considering moving the two camps to Hatiya island, several hours journey away by bus and boat.

A government official said Hasina had told a recent meeting that the camps were hindering tourism in nearby Cox’s Bazar, which boasts the world’s longest unbroken beach.

Hasina suggested officials look for an uninhabited stretch of land near a river bed to accommodate the camps, the official who was present at the meeting said, requesting anonymity.

The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, said it had not been consulted about any proposal to relocate the camps.

“We hope that if any move takes place, it will be carried out in a dignified manner. The success of any relocation will depend on the refugees’ perception of living conditions at the new location,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Onchita Shadman.

Inside the camp

Nur Alam, looking much older than his 43 years, is worried about more than just the plans to move the refugees.

One of his seven children is not registered because he was born to a second wife, and he fears he would have to leave the 11-year-old boy behind when the rest of the family move.

The children played around the small and sparse hut at the edge of the unmarked camp which is closed to outsiders. The refugees are not supposed to go out and mix with locals.

His wife Rupban, 35, sat in the doorway, so small it was necessary to almost crawl to enter the dwelling.

“We don’t want to move again,” she said firmly.

Nur Alam’s family live off the rations provided by the aid agencies. There is little else to do.

Even so, Ruhul Amin, 43, who crossed over from Myanmar seven years ago, is desperate to be listed as one of the documented refugees and live inside the camp, where soap and other basics are handed out and children attend classes.

Instead, he and his family of eight live in a hillside shack, scraping by on whatever he can earn as a day laborer.

He might make 250 Bangladesh taka ($3.22) a day, he said, half what a local would be paid. Sometimes they get alms during religious holidays.

“We have no choice,” he said. “If the authorities tell us to move, we will move. But we can’t go back to Myanmar.”

In recent months the local mood has hardened against the Rohingya, in part because they are blamed for encouraging poor Bangladeshis to join the thousands making the perilous journey abroad.

“They are the pioneers in these boat crossings to Malaysia,” said Kutupalong village official Ahmad. “They started going first, then they have been telling our youth to move because of commissions they receive.”

Reuters

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