Lessons for India from the Maldives’ experiment with water villas

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Editor's note: This is the sixth edition of Thirty-six, The Morning Context’s weekly newsletter on countless ecosystems in flux across India. If you’ve honeymooned in the Maldives, chances are you’ve stayed at one of the many water villas that dot its shores. These thatched-roof hideouts, stretching out like a necklace in the sea, packing in everything from a pool table to a personalized jacuzzi, are at the heart of the island nation’s fly-and-flop tourism model. Their decadence draws in the Gwyneth Paltrows and Andy Murrays of the world. And now, India too wants a slice of that action. On 31 July, the Lakshadweep islands invited global tenders worth Rs 806 crore to develop beach and water villas. Selected developers can construct up to 370 rooms under a public-private partnership model.  “Why is it that people are waiting to go to the Maldives, but are not even willing to come to Lakshadweep?” asked the union territory’s administrator Praful Khoda Patel in a  conversation with ThePrint in May. “It is to develop tourism and for long-term benefits that we are introducing the LDAR.”  LDAR, …