Those drooling over Addu et al - Insha-Ayappa, I intent to do a recon in the next few weeks of the said place with a small posse
That place is considered their second largest city and has substantial investment from Maldivian govts over years in social infra. It has a pretty thriving cultural scene (a surprise to me for a small bunch of islands) and Indian businesses do well there.
In general, posters in this thread show a revulsion towards non-baki Indian Sub-continent nations, without realizing that these nations DONT want to join us and we dont want them in too. Despite our growth et al, we are not that cool in their world's eyes. They used to land up here in Trivandrum for medical treatment, child birth, kids education etc. Infact when there was football match as part of SAF games here, we joked that the whole of Kumarapuram (a suburb where a large number of maldivians used to stay due to proximity to hospitals and has a consulate) vs Nepal is being played.
But that situation has changed and the hangers on who come to escape island life etc has almost disappeared. Except for those that need medical treatment and education, the hanger-ons among Maldivians prefer Sri Lanka more nowadays, as they allow them some Spitting-lion-puram kind of ownership (99 year lease) of apartments, which India dont. In return, srilankan real estate guys get some assured clientele who want to escape the scaremongering over rising water levels etc. This was a big loss of revenue for local small lodgings in Trivandrum, but fortunately the uptick in IT jobs are covering it
About the previous govt: I checked with three separate businessmen, who together does a significant amount of business over at the atolls and they all are gungho since Nov 17th. Their old contacts are back and cheen is being smacked by those the other guy earlier put in jail. The previous moron used to take hefty cuts out of all, including our businessmen. Only cheeni dudes paid up without complaining, because they are used to such shyte in PRC. He used to use some entities in Spitting-lion-puram, to channel these. Finally it reaches the financial septic tank of the world.
So despite our reassuring Econ-threads, we are not exactly khanland kind of paradise they want to come over to and thrive under our umbrella or being open to annexation. So such talk as "let us send a gunboat/brigade/squadron over and show them" is not going to get any traction in New Delhi. Not under any government. Everyone here thought Prime Minister Modi will send in troops, but he did not. Instead he allowed the boys in slacks and dark glasses to do their jobs. They are the ones that is needed to enforce the writ of India and its interests. Not uniforms. And a terrific job they did. They really pulled cheen's trousers down for world to see their frilly Ling-Choo's undies.... One only hope they will be rotated around other parts of sub-continent too