The island of Kachchatheevu remains an intractable issue in India-Srilanka relations. Comment.

The facts. Kachchatheevu is an uninhabited island of roughly 285 acres in the Palk Strait, formed by volcanic activity and historically claimed by the Raja of Ramnad. Under the maritime boundary agreement of 1974 between Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, India recognised it as lying on the Sri Lankan side of the boundary. Indian fishermen retained access for rest, net-drying and the annual St Anthony's Church festival, but the supplementary agreement of 1976 barred fishing in each other's exclusive economic zones, which removed the substance of the concession.

Why it will not settle.

• The real dispute is fishing, not sovereignty. The Palk Bay is shallow, narrow and over-fished, and Indian trawlers from Tamil Nadu cross into Sri Lankan waters. Bottom trawling is banned in Sri Lanka and destroys the seabed that northern Sri Lankan fishermen, themselves rebuilding after the civil war, depend on. Their grievance is legitimate and independent of politics.
• Domestic politics in Tamil Nadu. The Assembly has repeatedly resolved for retrieval, and the issue recurs at every election; a writ petition challenging the cession has been pending in the Supreme Court since 2008. No Indian government can concede finality.
• Sri Lanka's position is legally settled and politically immovable. Retrocession would require a treaty, and no Colombo government could survive proposing it.
• The arrests continue — Indian fishermen are detained regularly, which keeps the issue emotionally live even in years when nothing legal changes.

The workable path is to separate the questions: leave sovereignty where the 1974 agreement placed it, and negotiate a licensed-access and joint-management arrangement in the Palk Bay, combined with deep-sea fishing conversion, alternative livelihoods and an end to bottom trawling. India has funded some of this; the pace has been slow because the political incentive is to keep the grievance rather than remove its cause.