Is the Great Nicobar Island India’s Hormuz-like chokepoint against China?

Key points

• Far away from the mainland, the Indian government is pumping billions of dollars into a controversial development project that could spell the end of Great Nicobar Island.
• New Delhi, India — The southernmost point of India, the Great Nicobar Island, is closer to the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia than it is to the Indian mainland.
• No Indian prime minister has visited the island, which is the size of Hong Kong, since Indira Gandhi in 1984. India does not even conduct a full census on the island, relying on estimates of its population;
• the latest guess is that fewer than 10,000 people live there.
• Yet the island is now in the eye of a political storm over an $11bn project planned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to turn Great Nicobar into a major strategic and economic outpost in the Indian Ocean.