All this past week, as India’s smallest Union territory kept trending on Twitter, the plaintive kicker of Joni Mitchell’s 1970 environmentalism-themed anthem Big Yellow Taxi played on loop in my mind: “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.” The fact is almost no one has ever paid attention to Lakshadweep – and now it’s probably too late.
The proximate cause for the recent notoriety is the ire and anxiety stirred up by a bludgeoning slew of new legislation that has targeted the tiny Arabian Sea archipelago (it comprises 35 widely scattered islands, with the total surface area of just 19 square kilometres) after Praful Khoda Patel – who was home minister of Gujarat during Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister – took over its administration in December.
One after another in rapid fire, Patel has volleyed drastic new bills, orders and draft laws to keep the islanders reeling. There were already protests, but…