Maldives-Like Development Model Is Likely To Devastate Lakshadweep

For Rohan Arthur, a marine biologist and scientist with the Nature Conservation Foundation, the Lakshadweep is a home away from home. But now there is trouble in his paradise with a bunch of contentious regulations threatening to upend both lives and ecology. In an interview with Ketaki Desai, Arthur discusses threats to the archipelago

- Ketaki Desai

When was your first trip to the Lakshadweep and could you tell us why it is unique?

I first went to the Lakshadweep sometime in 1996 and have been going back there pretty much every year since. I’m a marine biologist and I’ve been studying the effects of climate change on the reefs. The Lakshadweep has been central to my intellectual life, and it is a home away from home. It ticks all the boxes of being an island paradise. The people are among the warmest and most welcoming communities I have ever been in. While I have spent the last 20 years worried about the impacts of climate change on the reef, I’ve become more and more concerned about the future of the island and the people living there.

Among the regulations proposed, one of the most contentious is the one giving the administrator a free hand with infrastructure projects. How damaging do you think it will be for the ecology of the area?

The rules are arbitrary and unfair, and take away agency from local communities. They represent a change in the relationship the administration is establishing with local society — a relationship that was collaborative and respectful until now. What I fear about these new regulations is that, by superseding all existing regulations (including several important environmental norms), they give the administration carte blanche to pursue a potentially disastrous plan of development that could completely cause the delicate ecology of the island to unravel.