Published: 23 April 2007
The Maldives is made up of 1,200 islands, 600,000 tourists (per year), 300,000 natives, and pretty much two countries. For a visitor it is a magnificent place, one of the most up-market resorts in the world, a necklace of beautiful atolls that pepper the Indian Ocean like jewels, each of them surrounded by aquamarine water, the sort that a lot of us probably still remember from the Bounty ads. Each of the 88 tourist islands has four-, five- or six-star cuisine, luxurious beach-side villas and first-rate staff; the service in the Maldives is as good as anywhere in South Asia. It is about the closest thing imaginable to paradise. Only with better food and no mosquitoes (the islands are sprayed daily).
The country is also renowned for being the likely first casualty in any serious increase in global warming. The sea here rises by exactly one centimetre every year, and the tourist industry can do nothing about it. However, there are bigger problems, namely those caused by the iniquity of existence. While the indigenous population who live on the resorts - most of which cater largely to Europeans - live in comparatively good conditions, those who live on the non-tourist islands, and in Male, the capital, live in something approaching squalor. This, compounded by boredom, lack of opportunities and large-scale claustrophobia (Male is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with more than 100,000 people squashed into an island barely a mile long) has resulted in a heroin epidemic. continue...
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