As more Maldivians yearn for city life, govt struggles to deal with an infra crisis

TO LIVE in the Maldives is to live in one of two worlds. Either you belong to the capital — Malé, a micro-manhattan in the Indian Ocean — or you are out in “the islands,” among the quietest and most remote villages this side of the Arctic tundra.

It is in these places — far from the archipelago’s walled-garden resort atolls, where no Maldivians actually dwell — that the country is picking between two visions of its future.

The outer islands are steadily depopulating, as the appeal of making a life through tuna fishing and coconut farming along their crushed-coral seashores shrinks. The splendid isolation may be what attracts visitors, but it seems incompatible with islanders’ aspirations in a nation modernized by global tourism.

As Maldivians give up on island life, the government feels compelled to keep building up Malé, the country’s one real city. But Malé is pressed up hard against the limits of human habitation. By some measures, it is the most densely populated island on Earth, with over a third of the country’s 520,000 people on a landmass that can be crossed by foot in about 20 minutes.

If more Maldivians are going to move there, its physical structure will need to be radically reworked. In the meantime, it is sprawling outward wherever it can: The government is surrounding Malé with sea bridges to artificial islands packed with housing projects financed by China and India.

On January 22, President Mohamed Muizzu announced his otherworldly vision for an undersea tunnel between Malé proper and a land reclamation project where Chinese investors will help build 65,000 housing units on what is now barely a sandbar.

Muizzu, a civil engineer by training, said the tunnel would “provide beautiful views of the sea” as commuters passed through it.

Humay Ghafoor, a researcher who campaigns against environmental degradation, said that “nobody does any assessments” before commissioning “massive infrastructure” projects. This allows an airport, for instance, to be built over a mangrove, destroying a whole island’s freshwater supply.

The Maldives encompasses a thousand islands stretched along a 550-mile axis, each one a bit of exposed coral that grew from the rims of a prehistoric range of undersea volcanoes. These form rings called atolls — a word that comes to English from the native Dhivehi language. Most of the 188 inhabited islands have fewer than 1,000 residents.

The resorts — those airy villas floating over turquoise seas — are all on technically “uninhabited” islands. The guests are foreign, and most of the staff too, mainly from India and Bangladesh. In some ways, the resorts are like offshore oil rigs, pumping out nearly all of the country’s income.

Maldivians are leaving the islands for the sake of their children, looking to Malé and the world beyond. When it comes to education and health care, there is no substitute for city life.

Many Maldivians have been on the move for a generation or more, leaving smaller communities for larger ones. More than anywhere else, those who can afford it go to Malé.

Thirty years ago, it was not unusual for families to send unaccompanied minors on long ferry journeys, of 20 hours or more, to live in Malé. They would stay with distant relatives or even strangers and work as pintsize housekeepers to pay for their room and board as they attended one of the country’s better schools.

The cramped conditions of the capital are the first challenge they face.

A compact grid of streets jams pedestrians, motorbikes, workshops and luxury perfumers together like a miniature version of central Hong Kong.

NYT Workers walking past a housing project, funded by the Indian government, on Hulhumalé, an artificial island near Male.