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Laksha Dweep and Maldives: It has long been predicted that Modi will destroy the delicate environment of Laksha Dweep by creating environmental damage through the influx of tourists and real estate for corporates
P. S. Remesh Chandran
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
Article Title Image By Adobe Stock. Graphics: Adobe SP.
Laksha Dweep and Maldives: It has long been predicted that Modi will destroy the delicate environment of Laksha Dweep by creating environmental damage through the influx of tourists and real estate for corporates
P. S. Remesh Chandran
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
It has been predicted for a long time that Modi will destroy the delicate environment of Laksha Dweep by causing environmental damage through the influx and abundance of tourists for the sake of real estate liberating there for corporates. Everything that was said then became true to the letter now. Maldives and its tourism are not the problems of the central BJP administration and the corporates that lead them but it’s how to take away the land and coastal facilities in Laksha Dweep for corporates without heeding the environmental damage, and how to open it from a closed society to an open real estate market like they did in Kashmir.
Some time ago when, without taking into account due democratic processes and the people’s uprisings against him, an administrator was appointed there giving him too much power for that purpose, that process had begun. That India's military equipment and Indian military presence in Maldives will have to be removed was made clear when a new president who raised the slogan of Expelling India during his election campaign came to power there. The bottom line is that even the people of Malé, who were pro-Indian for years, have become anti-Indian and pro-Chinese due to Narendra Modi’s and his BJP government's domestic policy based on extreme Hinduism which is not acceptable to any other country in the world except perhaps Nepal, and its foreign policy which does not look into the future and also has no future. Otherwise, a previous pro-Indian President would not have been thoroughly defeated like this and an anti-Indian elected as the President there.
When this new President went to China and signed around twenty new military and commercial pacts and asked their support for his ousting of India, it was expected that such a demand would arise from the new administration in Mali. It has now come about. It was indeed seeing this new president on the rise there with the support of China, and indeed expecting this demand to come soon, that the BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid hands on Laksha Dweep two years ago and started constructing a new airport for the Indian Army on an island there.
In addition, in January 2024, Modi publicly called for tourists including from countries like India to boycott Malé and announced that they can come instead to Laksha Dweep, and also asked the Indians to flock to Lakshadweep. Thus he lost his grip that was there, and through the unwise and unripe associated moves of his Foreign Relations Department alienated this long-standing friend of India, Malé, and positioned them permanently on China’s side. So the Indians everyone joined together and ended the grip India had there till now. Will the foreign department of any country do this foolishness? The three cabinet ministers of Male’s protesting that it was for Laksha Dweep that India in the person of Narendra Modi insulted Malé Tourism caricatured and propagandized as a big event inside and outside India also angered and more than antagonized the people of Malé who elected them. They forgot those three ministers were only suspended by their own Malé administration on account of this outrage to be reinstated later, not expelled.
Tourism in Malé is one going on for decades because of the ample infrastructure and basic facilities and amenities there, has been certified by the International Tour Operators as safe, and is recognized worldwide as a good travel destination in terms of accommodation and cost. None of the tourists who arrive there have been drugged, taken away to lone islets, raped, killed and hanged on jungle poles as happened to a Lithuanian girl in Kovalam in Kerala in India. If Laksha Dweep has the space to build infrastructure and has the environmental ambience to attract so many people, it could be developed into a safe tourist center like Malé in ten to twenty years may be, and international tour operators may accept it after giving it appropriate gradations and standards. That it will happen in just one or two years in swiftness if he could suppress Mali in tourism is just a vain dream of Modi and BJP and the Reliance, Adani and Tata Corporations on his back. The Tatas have already jumped ahead and started building a hotel there. Others will follow.
The Maldives or Malé Islands are 1192 coral islands stretching eight hundred kilometers along the equator in the Indian Ocean. There are a total of Five hundred thousand people there. Maldives owes over one and a quarter of a billion dollars to China and the subsequent submission for it. For a small island nation whose main income is tourism, this is no small sum, no small allegiance, nor small submission. Even if Maldives will eventually perish like Sri Lanka due to Chinese debt that is their internal matter and their own affair: it is an independent sovereign nation.
There are only seventy nautical miles to Malé from Laksha Dweep. It can only be guessed how dangerous it would be for India for Malé to go from under the influence of India to the influence of China whose rulers are not at all friendly with India. Yet due to its flawed foreign policy and malicious domestic policy under the Hindu BJP rule, India tried to provoke the Maldives in the name of tourism and Laksha Dweep, so it leaned more towards China. If China takes advantage of the general hatred among the people there towards India and sets up a base there, and if lakhs of tourists flow to Maldives from China, then what significance and future is there for Laksha Dweep and its supposed tourism?
Before the spread of Corona China had been sending the most number of tourists to Malé. Due to the Corona restrictions imposed on China by other countries as the country of its origin, then it became difficult for China for sending tourists out and India replaced China in sending the most number of tourists to Malé. But then India bargained with statistics of the increased traffic to Malé and thus made a mistake. So when Corona restrictions were lifted Malé requested China again to send more tourists and China more than obliged. India estranged a friendly nation.
There are those who think India's military presence is indispensable to Mali. How much military presence was there in fact? A total of 74 people to look after the two planes and the two helicopters given by India! It has been requested in polite terms that they should be removed before the 15th of March 2024 (which was realized by May 2024). ‘Will Expel The Indians’ was an election promise of the new president.
Laksha Dweep or the One Lakh Islands as they call it is a 36-island archipelago of just 34 square kilometers in the Arabian Sea, not more than 400 kilometers from India anywhere, with barely a 65,000 population all except 3 percent of which are Sunni Muslims (something the present Hindu rulers of India find easy to play with!). The Parliamentary control and administration is from India: it is a Union Territory of India. No substantial tourism development is possible there by anyone without destroying and sacrificing the local economy and delicate environment, and the traditional culture existing there since 1500 BC as well. Most influence and even judicial control is from the nearest Kerala, and the prominent language too is Malayalam. Alcohol is totally prohibited in Laksha Dweep for anyone.
Though Maldives or Malé is a Muslim country with Sharia Laws, considering it’s the country’s only significant source of income, the Malé authorities realistically relaxed rules and allowed import of liquor for tourists and in tourist resorts and boats liquor flows freely for tourists, even on Ramadan days, because they know once it stops in the name of dry religion the tourism flow and this revenue also will stop. That is one reason Laksha Dweep cannot compete with Malé in tourism. There is also the question of space.
Some time ago when, without taking into account due democratic processes and the people’s uprisings against him, an administrator was appointed there giving him too much power for that purpose, that process had begun. That India's military equipment and Indian military presence in Maldives will have to be removed was made clear when a new president who raised the slogan of Expelling India during his election campaign came to power there. The bottom line is that even the people of Malé, who were pro-Indian for years, have become anti-Indian and pro-Chinese due to Narendra Modi’s and his BJP government's domestic policy based on extreme Hinduism which is not acceptable to any other country in the world except perhaps Nepal, and its foreign policy which does not look into the future and also has no future. Otherwise, a previous pro-Indian President would not have been thoroughly defeated like this and an anti-Indian elected as the President there.
When this new President went to China and signed around twenty new military and commercial pacts and asked their support for his ousting of India, it was expected that such a demand would arise from the new administration in Mali. It has now come about. It was indeed seeing this new president on the rise there with the support of China, and indeed expecting this demand to come soon, that the BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid hands on Laksha Dweep two years ago and started constructing a new airport for the Indian Army on an island there.
In addition, in January 2024, Modi publicly called for tourists including from countries like India to boycott Malé and announced that they can come instead to Laksha Dweep, and also asked the Indians to flock to Lakshadweep. Thus he lost his grip that was there, and through the unwise and unripe associated moves of his Foreign Relations Department alienated this long-standing friend of India, Malé, and positioned them permanently on China’s side. So the Indians everyone joined together and ended the grip India had there till now. Will the foreign department of any country do this foolishness? The three cabinet ministers of Male’s protesting that it was for Laksha Dweep that India in the person of Narendra Modi insulted Malé Tourism caricatured and propagandized as a big event inside and outside India also angered and more than antagonized the people of Malé who elected them. They forgot those three ministers were only suspended by their own Malé administration on account of this outrage to be reinstated later, not expelled.
Tourism in Malé is one going on for decades because of the ample infrastructure and basic facilities and amenities there, has been certified by the International Tour Operators as safe, and is recognized worldwide as a good travel destination in terms of accommodation and cost. None of the tourists who arrive there have been drugged, taken away to lone islets, raped, killed and hanged on jungle poles as happened to a Lithuanian girl in Kovalam in Kerala in India. If Laksha Dweep has the space to build infrastructure and has the environmental ambience to attract so many people, it could be developed into a safe tourist center like Malé in ten to twenty years may be, and international tour operators may accept it after giving it appropriate gradations and standards. That it will happen in just one or two years in swiftness if he could suppress Mali in tourism is just a vain dream of Modi and BJP and the Reliance, Adani and Tata Corporations on his back. The Tatas have already jumped ahead and started building a hotel there. Others will follow.
The Maldives or Malé Islands are 1192 coral islands stretching eight hundred kilometers along the equator in the Indian Ocean. There are a total of Five hundred thousand people there. Maldives owes over one and a quarter of a billion dollars to China and the subsequent submission for it. For a small island nation whose main income is tourism, this is no small sum, no small allegiance, nor small submission. Even if Maldives will eventually perish like Sri Lanka due to Chinese debt that is their internal matter and their own affair: it is an independent sovereign nation.
There are only seventy nautical miles to Malé from Laksha Dweep. It can only be guessed how dangerous it would be for India for Malé to go from under the influence of India to the influence of China whose rulers are not at all friendly with India. Yet due to its flawed foreign policy and malicious domestic policy under the Hindu BJP rule, India tried to provoke the Maldives in the name of tourism and Laksha Dweep, so it leaned more towards China. If China takes advantage of the general hatred among the people there towards India and sets up a base there, and if lakhs of tourists flow to Maldives from China, then what significance and future is there for Laksha Dweep and its supposed tourism?
Before the spread of Corona China had been sending the most number of tourists to Malé. Due to the Corona restrictions imposed on China by other countries as the country of its origin, then it became difficult for China for sending tourists out and India replaced China in sending the most number of tourists to Malé. But then India bargained with statistics of the increased traffic to Malé and thus made a mistake. So when Corona restrictions were lifted Malé requested China again to send more tourists and China more than obliged. India estranged a friendly nation.
There are those who think India's military presence is indispensable to Mali. How much military presence was there in fact? A total of 74 people to look after the two planes and the two helicopters given by India! It has been requested in polite terms that they should be removed before the 15th of March 2024 (which was realized by May 2024). ‘Will Expel The Indians’ was an election promise of the new president.
Laksha Dweep or the One Lakh Islands as they call it is a 36-island archipelago of just 34 square kilometers in the Arabian Sea, not more than 400 kilometers from India anywhere, with barely a 65,000 population all except 3 percent of which are Sunni Muslims (something the present Hindu rulers of India find easy to play with!). The Parliamentary control and administration is from India: it is a Union Territory of India. No substantial tourism development is possible there by anyone without destroying and sacrificing the local economy and delicate environment, and the traditional culture existing there since 1500 BC as well. Most influence and even judicial control is from the nearest Kerala, and the prominent language too is Malayalam. Alcohol is totally prohibited in Laksha Dweep for anyone.
Though Maldives or Malé is a Muslim country with Sharia Laws, considering it’s the country’s only significant source of income, the Malé authorities realistically relaxed rules and allowed import of liquor for tourists and in tourist resorts and boats liquor flows freely for tourists, even on Ramadan days, because they know once it stops in the name of dry religion the tourism flow and this revenue also will stop. That is one reason Laksha Dweep cannot compete with Malé in tourism. There is also the question of space.
Written on 14 January 2024 and first published on: 14 May 2024
Original article in Malayalam written on 14 January 2024 and first published on: 16 January 2024
SM1507. ലക്ഷദ്ദ്വീപും മാലിയും: ലക്ഷദ്ദ്വീപിലെ ലോലപരിസ്ഥിതിയെ കോ൪പ്പറേറ്റുകളു്ക്കു് റീയലെസ്സു്റ്റേറ്റിനുവേണു്ടി ടൂറിസ്സു്റ്റുബാഹുല്യത്തിലൂടെ പരിസ്ഥിതിനാശമുണു്ടാക്കി മോദിതക൪ക്കുമെന്നു് പണു്ടേതന്നെ പ്രവചിക്കപ്പെട്ടതാണു്
https://sahyadrimalayalam.blogspot.com/2024/01/1507.html
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