Destinations known | Save Lakshadweep: Indian island dwellers protest tourism development plans, fearing they will lose their homes
- Islanders in the Lakshadweep archipelago are alarmed over proposals that could see them removed or relocated from their properties for tourism development
- New administrator Praful Khoda Patel plans to build ‘three eco-friendly water villa projects’ similar to those found in the Maldives, reports say
In Malayalam, the official language of the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, as well as in Sanskrit, the word lakshadweep means “hundred thousand islands”. In fact, there are but 36 in the remote Indian archipelago of that name, which spreads across 32 sq km of the Arabian Sea, about 300km off Kerala’s coast. Ten of those islands are inhabited by a total population of about 65,000, and none is wider than 1.6km.
All of them, though, are under threat from tourism, at least as far as islanders are concerned. Some of those locals went on a hunger strike recently, to protest legislation drafted by Lakshadweep’s new administrator, Praful Khoda Patel, designed, among other things, to expedite tourism development, according to Indian newspaper The Economic Times.
“Since he took over the Lakshadweep administration in December last year, Patel has pushed through a slew of new laws and regulations without consulting locally elected representatives in India’s only Muslim-majority territory apart from Indian-administered Kashmir,”Al Jazeera reported last month.
The controversial proposals range from a ban on beef to a law that disqualifies anyone with more than two children from running in local elections. However, the one that has raised the most alarm, according to Al Jazeera, is the Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation 2021, which would give Patel powers to remove or relocate residents from their property for town planning or development reasons.
In a May interview with The Hindu newspaper, Patel, who is backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, argued that his administration was “committed to developing the infrastructure in the archipelago as well as providing employment to the islanders”. The way he plans to do this, according to The Hindu, is by building “three eco-friendly water villa projects”, similar to those found in the Maldives, with work set to begin
in August.