Transformation of Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Breaking the Tyranny of Distance: How twelve years of connectivity, infrastructure and institutional expansion brought India’s farthest islands closer to the national mainstream By Debkumar Bhadra For decades, many regions, located far from India's political and administrative centres, including North Eastern States and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, quietly lived under what Hon'ble Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs Shri Kiren Rijiju described as the "tyranny of distance," speaking at the Andaman Ideas Summit 2026, organised by The Wave Andaman, at Sri Vijaya Puram (earlier Port Blair) on the evening of June 20. I watched him say it live on YouTube, from thousands of kilometres away in Nagpur. That I could watch it in real time is itself a telling marker of how far the islands have come. A live broadcast out of Sri Vijaya Puram, watched anywhere in the country as it happened, would have been a near impossibility before the Chennai-Anda...