Subhra Kanti Gupta
Sri Vijaya Puram: In every Indian war-gaming exercise that simulates conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands are the swing factor. Geography has gifted India a lever few countries possess: from these islands, sitting barely 600 km from the Malacca Strait, New Delhi can monitor—and if necessary, disrupt—the arteries that carry China’s oil and trade. Nearly 60,000 ships transit the strait every year, carrying over a third of global commerce and almost all of China’s seaborne energy imports. For Beijing, this is the famous “Malacca Dilemma.” For India, it should be a trump card. Yet for all their potential, the islands remain underdeveloped, under-resourced, and strategically under-imagined, blunted by bureaucratic caution and political hesitation.
The Andaman & Nicobar Command, set up in 2001 as India’s first and only tri-service theatre command, was meant to be the instrument that translated geography into hard power. Two decades later, it is still a theatre in name more than substance. Airfields at Car Nicobar and Campbell Bay can host limited assets but are not fully hardened for sustained fighter operations. Plans to base Su-30MKIs permanently on the islands have stalled repeatedly, and surveillance aircraft like the P-8I Poseidons still fly most of their patrols from the mainland rather than Port Blair. Naval facilities remain modest, unable to handle aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines in a crisis. The command gives India a forward presence, but not yet the decisive punch it was designed for.
China, meanwhile, is not waiting. Its submarines have been spotted in the Bay of Bengal under the guise of anti-piracy patrols. Research vessels loiter for weeks mapping undersea topography, data critical for submarine warfare. Chinese-funded ports at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Gwadar in Pakistan, and Kyaukpyu in Myanmar give the People’s Liberation Army Navy a string of dual-use facilities across the Indian Ocean. The message is clear: Beijing is building options, while India is hedging.
Three excuses hold Delhi back. The first is environmental sensitivity. Protecting fragile reefs and indigenous tribes is vital, but the balance has tipped towards paralysis, with development projects stalled for years even when they serve both civilian and military needs. The second is bureaucratic inertia. New Delhi remains wary of “militarising” the islands too visibly, resulting in incremental moves but no grand vision. The third is fear of foreign entanglement. The United States and Japan have quietly sought greater access to Port Blair, but India has resisted, unwilling to turn the islands into another Diego Garcia. While strategic autonomy matters, the fear of “foreign bases” has meant missed opportunities for deeper Quad cooperation.
The result is an archipelago that functions as a shield rather than a sword. The islands provide surveillance reach, early warning, and deterrence through visibility. But as an offensive platform for sea denial at the Malacca chokepoint, they remain under-forged. In theory, the Andamans are India’s unsinkable aircraft carrier. In practice, they are still more of a listening post than a strike hub. As one naval strategist remarked, “In war-gaming exercises, the Andamans are treated as a swing factor. But in reality, they have been treated like an afterthought.”
What needs to change is obvious. India must invest in infrastructure that can support permanent fighter squadrons, nuclear submarines, and carrier operations. Campbell Bay should be developed into a full-scale airbase capable of sustained operations, and Car Nicobar’s runways hardened for rapid deployment. Sri Vijaya Puram facilities must be scaled to berth capital ships. Surveillance assets need to be based in the islands, not flown in from the mainland. Drones, satellites, and P-8Is should maintain permanent watch over the Bay of Bengal and Malacca Strait. India should also deepen logistics and rotational access with Quad partners—without turning the islands into a foreign base—so that deterrence is shared and credible. Development plans like the proposed Great Nicobar trans-shipment hub should be dual-use by design, serving both trade and troop mobility.
In the larger picture, the islands must be understood as the eastern hinge of India’s security. Without them, “Act East” risks being a slogan. They are India’s only territory that looks directly into Southeast Asia, making them the natural anchor of an Indo-Pacific strategy. China has grasped the value of outposts from Djibouti to Gwadar. India, by contrast, has an outpost handed to it by geography yet continues to hesitate in using it.
The Andamans are no longer a postcard of beaches or an environmental reserve at the edge of India’s imagination. They are the fulcrum of India’s security calculus in the Indo-Pacific. To under-invest in them is to handicap deterrence at the precise moment when China is most assertive. Geography has given India a trump card. The question is whether New Delhi will finally play it, or continue to bluff while others build the future around it.
Subhra Kanti Gupta is a senior defence analyst and founder of the independent policy think tank Look East.
