India plans to remake Lakshadweep for tourism

THE BROCHURE writes itself: a scattering of coral ringlets, each encircling its own turquoise lagoon within the Arabian Sea, Lakshadweep is India at its most alluring. These 36 islands, together totalling just 32 square kilometres of land, are peopled by a matrilineal, mostly Muslim society where families make their living through seafaring and coconut harvests.

In the past fortnight this drop in the Indian bucket, just 70,000 people among 1.4bn, has come to exemplify a sort of controversy that is becoming incessant. The national government of Narendra Modi and his Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is flexing little-tested executive muscles to push through a package of reforms for the far-off islands. They would open up the archipelago to development, of tourism in particular. Locals are dismayed.

In theory “union territories” such as Lakshadweep are protected from some of the vagaries of electoral politics, since they are not part of any state. But that leaves the central government with sweeping power over them, which it increasingly employs, as Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir have lately discovered. Lakshadweep has an administrator—in effect, picked by the prime minister—who may rule without regard for local opinion. These days, that is just what he is doing.

Before the latest administrator, Praful K....