When 26 atolls and 1190 islands comprise a country, it has to be a highly interesting entity. I am talking about an archipelago in the Arabian Sea, about 2500 km southwest of India and 1100 km from Sri Lanka. This is Maldives, also called a Garland of Islands. I visited Maldives in 1990.

From the aircraft, if the sky is clear, these islands look like deep green patches floating on the blue sea and do give a garland-like look. There are many trees in Maldives; predominant among these are coconut, banyan, Red Sandal, and what is called the Lantern tree. There are several varieties of flowers. Maldives is really a fantastic sight as if somebody has carelessly thrown a garland into the sea. I was already in Sri Lanka collecting material for a book “Media Handbook for South Asia” and this unique country was to be my next hop.

Of these 1190 islands just about 200 are inhabited while another 100 are developed as resorts. Its capital Male is 5.9 sq km in area. Maldives is the smallest Asian country with a total of 298 sq km land area. Its average ground level is barely 1.5 metres high from the sea. It may sound like a joke but if one starts running from one end of any of these islands, one may soon land up in the sea at the other end. The highest point on these islands is just 2.4 m from sea level. That makes it the world’s lowest country, lower than the Netherlands.

Maldives’ ancient past has almost vanished with time except for some rock carvings. The first settlers were possibly of Indo-Aryan origin. The other traceable inhabitants of a later period were the Giraavaru people who lived in the Giraavaru Island. They were most likely of Tamil origin from India’s Malabar Coast. Interestingly, these people were ruled by a woman.

The Maldives has a long history of its links with India as well as with Sri Lanka. Without delving into the past history, let me point out that in every political upheaval in Maldives. India has come out in its support. Maldives’ capital Male has an airport but it is on a neighbouring island. Its runway was built with slotted steel plates but afterwards replaced with asphalt. It has since been extended and is reported to be 3200 m long. When we landed there, there were hardly any major buildings except for some airport facilities. Now there is even a transit hotel and it harbours several amphibious tourist aircraft.

It was quite revealing for me to find out that the customs there were quite strict. I was carrying some books and some token presentation items for the Information Minister of Maldives. But these were not allowed to be taken to Male.

Even on explaining that these were meant for the Information Minister, the customs officer simply did not relent and asked me to leave them at the customs and then to get them collected by a ministry official. There was a book on the New Information Order and he was not sure if it was a subversive literature.

The restriction was not a surprise since Maldives had already faced a number of coups. The customs fellow did not understand much English and it was difficult to communicate with him. I had to do what he wanted and got the materials collected the next day.

To reach Male from the airport, we had to get into a Dhow and cross a slice of the sea. The Dhow is a very interesting boat. Coir fibres from dried coconuts are made into ropes to bind together the wooden hull boards in the form of a boat. These boats can withstand impact of reefs in shallow waters. Low bottom modern boats are now in operation besides hydroplanes. It is reported that the Chinese are now building a bridge across the sea between the Airport Island and Male.

We stayed in a hotel in Male from where the sea was only a few metres away. The gently lapping waves of the sea were quite soothing in the night and helped me fall asleep. But the quiet sea could be very dangerous as was seen in the 2004 tsunami when all the islands except nine were flooded and a lot of damage occurred.

There are no rivers or any other natural source of drinking water in Male. Since there is no water, how do the people drink water, was our query to the hotel manager. He explained that the drinking water was collected by harvesting rain water. The collection and distribution of this water was under the charge of the local Mosque administration.

Male is now a densely populated town. Within its small area, some 20,000 people lived in 1987. But the number has steadily increased. The current population is 133412. If it continues to grow, very soon there will be no space to walk in Male! The drinking water situation in Male has improved now with modern means of desalination of sea water.

In 2014 the country suffered a terrible water crisis when its desalination plants broke down. India, Sri Lanka and some other countries supplied large quantities of drinking water and desalination plants to get potable water. Maldives is a member of SAARC and NAM. It had joined the Commonwealth in 1982 but withdrew in October 2016.

My meetings with the information minister of Maldives and officials of his department were not very productive. Maldives hardly had a concept of freedom of the press which reportedly has not improved over the years. I met a few journalists. They were aggrieved but had no organised expression. Journalists faced harassment and violence regularly. The 2008 Constitution protects freedom of expression, but it also restricts speeches deemed “contrary to any tenets of Islam”.

The Maldives government is notorious for its violations of human rights. There are no codes or laws for freedom of the press and human rights. It has also not ratified the UN human rights convention including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Literacy in Maldives is over 90% but when I visited the archipelago, there were not many newspaper readers. There were two daily newspapers and over 130 other publications with limited circulation. The two daily papers, both bilingual, English and Dhivehi, employed about 120 journalists. Radio was the main means of information and communication. Television at the time of my visit covered only Male and Kaaru islands.

The media strength has since grown and privately owned media also operate. The Maldives Journalist Association, according to a report, was formed in 2009. It is quite active despite government restrictions. It has however accused the government and political leaders of interference with private media.

Reports indicate that the current political and socio-economic situation in Maldives has not very much improved since my visit and uncertainty about its future persists. This unique country has still to go a long way to find a place in the comity of nations in the real sense though it is a UN member since 1965 and also of several other international bodies including South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).