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The Great Nicobar Island is part of an archipelago that lies deep in the Indian Ocean. Until mainland Indians started settling here a few decades ago, its humans consisted of around a thousand indigenous folks.

It's governed by India but is so distant that it takes a flight from the mainland and a 30-hour ferry ride to arrive.

The Indian government hopes to change all that.

The upcoming Great Nicobar Project is set to transform this sleepy island into a bustling township over the next three decades.

Once complete, the island will have a civilian and military airport, a transshipment port that caters to container ships, a power plant and a new town equipped to host a million tourists a year — nearly 100 times its current population.

The project will cover an area twice the size of Manhattan, and potentially feature high rises, discos, even Disneyland-like theme parks.

Environmentalists and critics have a list of concerns. They say farms, beaches and hills will be swallowed up and a million trees will be felled. They worry about the impact on endangered animals, like leatherback turtles, largest of all sea turtles, and the Nicobarese pigeon, the closest living relative of the dodo, with its distinctive fluorescent green and orange plume.

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