CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 118 of 120

Correct — A, Shaheed Island. The Chennai to Andaman and Nicobar Islands submarine cable, inaugurated in August 2020, landed at Port Blair and at seven other island points — Swaraj Dweep, Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Great Nicobar, Kamorta, Long Island and Rangat. Shaheed Dweep is not on that list, which is why it is the odd one out here, while the other three options are all among the eight landing points. The renaming behind the question is the part that has to be known: in December 2018 three islands received new names, with Ross Island becoming Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, Havelock Island becoming Swaraj Dweep and Neil Island becoming Shaheed Dweep. So Swaraj Island in option (b) is Havelock, which was connected, and Shaheed Island in option (a) is Neil, which was not.

• (b)Swaraj Island — Swaraj Dweep is the renamed Havelock Island, the busiest tourist destination in the Andamans, and it was one of the eight points the cable served from the start.
• (c)Little Andaman — Also among the eight landing points. It lies south of South Andaman across the Duncan Passage and was included in the first phase.
• (d)Port Blair — The main landing point of the whole project and the capital of the territory. The cable runs from Chennai to Port Blair, so it could not possibly have been left out.

The Chennai and Andaman and Nicobar Islands cable, usually shortened to CANI, carries about 2,250 km of submarine optical fibre with four fibre pairs, each pair capable of up to 6.4 terabits per second. Before it was laid the islands depended on satellite links with narrow bandwidth and long latency. Cable laying was inaugurated in January 2020 and the completed link in August 2020. The project cost about 1,224 crore rupees, with the capital cost met from the Universal Service Obligation Fund and the operating cost by the territorial administration; BSNL was the executing agency.

The question looks like an infrastructure item but is really a place-names item, and it is decided entirely by the December 2018 renaming. A candidate who does not know that Shaheed Dweep is Neil Island and Swaraj Dweep is Havelock cannot tell options (a) and (b) apart at all. There is a genuine historical tangle worth knowing here: in 1943, when the Japanese handed nominal control of the territory to Subhas Chandra Bose's Azad Hind, he named the Andaman group Shaheed and the Nicobar group Swaraj — so the 2018 renaming reuses his two words but attaches them to individual islands rather than to the two groups. Port Blair is the obvious throwaway option, since the cable's whole purpose was to reach it.

• The CANI submarine cable connected Port Blair and seven other islands: Swaraj Dweep, Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Great Nicobar, Kamorta, Long Island and Rangat.
• Neil Island, renamed Shaheed Dweep, was not among the landing points.
• In December 2018 Ross Island became Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, Havelock Island became Swaraj Dweep and Neil Island became Shaheed Dweep.
• The cable runs about 2,250 km with four fibre pairs, each of up to 6.4 Tbps, at a project cost of about 1,224 crore rupees.
• In 1943 Subhas Chandra Bose had used the same two words for the whole groups — Shaheed for the Andamans and Swaraj for the Nicobars.

• Mixing up Swaraj Dweep and Shaheed Dweep — Havelock and Neil respectively.
• Assuming Bose's 1943 usage matches the 2018 names; he applied the words to whole groups, not to single islands.
• Treating Port Blair as an island in its own right; it is the capital town on South Andaman.

As this odd-one-out on the cable, as an old-name to new-name match, or through the physical geography of the island chain.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Havelock Island in the Andamans was renamed in 2018 as

  • (a)Shaheed Dweep
  • (b)Swaraj Dweep
  • (c)Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep
  • (d)Vivekananda Dweep

  Answer(b) Swaraj Dweep — Neil Island became Shaheed Dweep and Ross Island became Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep in the same announcement.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ten Degree Channel separates

  • (a)the Andaman group from the Nicobar group
  • (b)Little Andaman from South Andaman
  • (c)the Nicobar Islands from Sumatra
  • (d)Lakshadweep from the Maldives

  Answer(a) the Andaman group from the Nicobar group — it lies along the tenth parallel of north latitude in the Bay of Bengal.