The convoy assembled with the studied precision that officialdom frequently deploys when it wishes to signal the reassuring presence of regulation. Vehicles lined up methodically, engines idling beneath the humid Andaman sky, as the procession prepared to enter the dense forest corridor along the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) that cuts through the Jarawa Forest Reserve between Port Blair and Diglipur, passing through Jirkatang, Baratang, Middle Strait, Kadamtala and Rangat, among others.
To the casual observer, the arrangement might appear to embody a carefully supervised transit mechanism designed to safeguard one of India’s most vulnerable indigenous communities. However, the longer one travels through the thick green canopy that envelops this controversial road, the more apparent it becomes that the spectacle represents not the strength of the regulatory framework but the fragile theatre of its enforcement.
Few policy questions in India today sit at the uneasy intersection of human rights, conservation and development quite like the continued operation of the Andaman Trunk Road through Jarawa territory. The state, conscious of the historical vulnerability of the Jarawas, has repeatedly assured the public that its approach is guided by a doctrine of “controlled contact” combined with administrative restraint. That philosophy finds expression within the legal regime created under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956, a statute that seeks to shield indigenous tribes of the archipelago from exploitation, intrusion and the corrosive consequences of unregulated interaction with the outside world.
Judicial oversight has reinforced this protective intent. The Supreme Court of India, recognising the fragile position of the Jarawas within the rapidly expanding settler economy of the islands, has repeatedly intervened to ensure that administrative convenience does not overwhelm the imperative of cultural preservation. The convoy system governing passage through the reserve emerged from precisely this judicial consciousness — a carefully constructed compromise allowing limited transit while seeking to prevent the road from becoming a corridor of intrusion.
On paper, the regulatory architecture appears impressively robust. Vehicles are permitted to move through the reserve only in escorted convoys at designated hours. Halting along the route is prohibited. Photography is banned. Interaction with the Jarawas is forbidden. The underlying philosophy is clear: travellers must pass through the forest as anonymous transients, neither disturbing nor engaging with a community that has survived for millennia through a self-sufficient hunter-gatherer existence.
Sadly, the lived reality along the road reveals a far more complicated picture. Inside the convoy the day the writer travelled, the discipline one might expect within such a sensitive zone appeared strangely absent. Tour operators, private taxi drivers and car owners manoeuvred their vehicles with the relaxed indifference typically associated with mainland highways rather than a protected tribal corridor.
Seat belts were frequently ignored. Music systems blared loudly enough to disrupt the forest’s natural quiet. Several drivers spoke animatedly on mobile phones while steering their vehicles along the winding stretch that passes directly through Jarawa territory. The convoy that was meant to embody restraint had, in practice, assumed the rhythm of an impatient traffic column eager to clear the forest stretch.
This gap between regulatory aspiration and operational reality reflects deeper contradictions embedded within the Jarawa Protection Plan itself. Official policy frequently invokes the principle of “minimal interference” with the tribe’s way of life. At the same time, the administration continues to maintain and even upgrade the Andaman Trunk Road, constructing bridges and improving infrastructure that effectively transform the road into a permanent high-traffic artery slicing through the heart of the reserve.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. A policy that claims to protect isolation cannot easily coexist with a busy roadway that channels hundreds of vehicles daily through the very landscape meant to remain insulated from outside influence.
The tensions extend beyond the road itself. In recent years, buffer zones surrounding the reserve have reportedly been diluted to accommodate the livelihood activities of nearby settler communities. While such decisions may respond to economic pressures within the islands, they inevitably bring outsiders closer to Jarawa territory, gradually eroding the physical distance that once served as a natural barrier between the tribe and the expanding frontier of settlement.
Even the enforcement of existing regulations presents formidable challenges. The convoy system theoretically ensures that all vehicles remain under supervision, yet the sheer number of travellers and the logistical limitations of monitoring each individual vehicle create obvious vulnerabilities. Reports of illegal “human safaris”, in which tourists pay drivers to slow down or manoeuvre vehicles in order to photograph Jarawa individuals along the roadside, continue to surface despite official prohibitions.
Such practices transform a protected indigenous community into an anthropological spectacle.
Further complications arise from an ongoing internal debate that has quietly shaped policy discussions in the islands. Some officials advocate maintaining the Jarawas in voluntary isolation, arguing that their cultural autonomy must remain the paramount objective. Others propose introducing modern services such as health care and education, believing that gradual integration into the mainstream will offer long-term security. Both approaches carry their own risks.
Intervention, even when motivated by welfare concerns, may undermine the tribe’s traditional self-sufficiency. Complete isolation becomes increasingly difficult when a busy highway continues to cut through their forest homeland. As the convoy advanced deeper into the reserve, the risks created by this uneasy coexistence became increasingly visible.
The Jarawas inhabit these forests with an instinctive familiarity that predates the arrival of roads or settlers. They forage along the forest edges, move silently through the undergrowth and occasionally appear along the roadside. In such circumstances, a speeding vehicle driven by a distracted motorist represents far more than a minor traffic violation. It becomes a potential threat to life and limb within a community that the law professes to protect with exceptional vigilance.
The dangers extend far beyond the immediate hazards of traffic. Anthropologists have long warned that the Jarawas possess limited immunity to diseases common among mainland populations. Having lived in relative isolation for tens of thousands of years, their immune systems remain vulnerable to infections that the outside world considers routine. Past outbreaks have demonstrated the devastating consequences of such exposure. The measles epidemic of 1999 dramatically reduced the tribe’s numbers, offering a sobering reminder of how fragile their demographic survival can be.
The recent global pandemic further underscored this vulnerability. A virus carried inadvertently by a single traveller could, in theory, sweep through a population that numbers barely a few hundred individuals. Estimates suggest that the Jarawa population stands at roughly 647 as of 2025 — a number so small that even a limited outbreak could inflict irreversible damage upon the community.
Equally troubling are the dietary disruptions that accompany increasing contact with passing travellers. Instances have been documented where motorists throw biscuits, processed snacks or tobacco from vehicle windows toward Jarawa individuals standing by the roadside. What may appear to outsiders as harmless generosity carries profound consequences. A sudden shift from a traditional hunter-gatherer diet to processed foods laden with sugar and salt can introduce metabolic disorders such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, ailments for which the tribe has neither cultural familiarity nor traditional remedies.
The introduction of tobacco and alcohol compounds the danger further, creating patterns of dependency that threaten to destabilise the social fabric of a community historically organised around subsistence hunting and collective sharing.
Beyond these health risks lies an even darker dimension. Human rights groups have, over the years, reported disturbing allegations of sexual exploitation involving Jarawa women. Poachers, illegal settlers and unscrupulous drivers who gain access to the reserve through the road network have occasionally been accused of abusing the profound power imbalance that exists between a technologically advanced outside society and a small indigenous community with limited avenues for legal recourse.
Each such incident represents not merely a crime against an individual but an assault upon the dignity and safety of an entire people.
The ecological consequences of the road are equally troubling. By providing convenient access into the depths of the reserve, the Andaman Trunk Road has inadvertently opened pathways for poachers who target the very resources upon which the Jarawas depend. Wild boar, honey and monitor lizards form essential components of the tribe’s subsistence economy, yet these species are frequently targeted by outsiders seeking profit.
At the same time, the continuous movement of vehicles fragments the forest habitat and disrupts wildlife patterns. The noise of engines and ongoing infrastructure projects alters the quiet rhythms of the jungle, interfering with the nomadic hunting practices that have sustained the Jarawas for generations.
For critics of the road, these cumulative pressures transform the Andaman Trunk Road into what some have starkly described as a “deadly artery” cutting through a 1,028-square-kilometre reserve.
It is therefore hardly surprising that alternative solutions have repeatedly been proposed. Both the Supreme Court of India and advocacy groups such as Survival International have long argued for the development of a permanent sea route that would allow travellers to bypass the Jarawa Reserve altogether. Ferry services already connect portions of the archipelago, offering a route that avoids the forest corridor entirely.
Still, the road continues to dominate transport preferences. For many settlers in the islands, the Andaman Trunk Road remains faster, cheaper and more convenient than maritime alternatives. The resulting reality presents a stark dilemma: the everyday convenience of a growing settler population now stands in uneasy opposition to the survival of one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures.
By the time the convoy eventually emerged from the forested stretch leading toward Diglipur, the impression that lingered was difficult to dismiss.
From the vantage point of official policy documents, the Jarawa Protection Plan appears both humane and carefully designed. Within the forest itself, however, the system reveals a troubling elasticity where the lofty language of protection struggles to withstand the pressures of convenience, commerce and human curiosity.
For the Jarawas, who inhabit these forests not as temporary occupants but as the rightful custodians of a landscape shaped by their ancestors over millennia, the distance between law as proclaimed and law as practised may ultimately determine whether their civilisation continues to endure quietly within the Andaman wilderness or gradually recedes into the sombre historical narrative of indigenous worlds overwhelmed by the slow encroachment of modernity.
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Gajanan Khergamker is editor, solicitor, documentary filmmaker. A version of this article first appeared in The Draft
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