India’s digital thirst: Data centres are rising in water-scarce regions — and locals are paying the priceTwo starkly different worlds conver...

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India’s digital thirst: Data centres are rising in water-scarce regions — and locals are paying the priceTwo starkly different worlds conver...
India’s digital thirst: Data centres are rising in water-scarce regions — and locals are paying the price
Two starkly different worlds converge in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. At the entrance to Tusiana village in Greater Noida, a sprawling 20-acre complex looms along a wide, freshly paved road, its perimeter ringed with high walls, barbed wire and police barricades. Inside, a towering sub-station hums with electricity. Trees and gleaming SUVs line the route, creating a veneer of prosperity. Yet, drive a kilometre further and the illusion dissolves: the roads grow rough, the air turns foul, and residents trudge past open drains and sewage-choked streets — a daily reality in a village still deprived of basic infrastructure.

This is Tusiana, home to around 2,000 people in Gautam Buddha Nagar district. In 2022, it became the unlikely stage for a high-profile inauguration, when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and then Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar opened the Yotta Data Centre Park. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) worth Rs 39,000 crore ($4.39 billion) was signed between Yotta and the state to develop six data centres over the next five to seven years. The facility is currently only partially operational, with one of its six data centres open.

While Yotta Data Services touts the facility as “North India’s gateway to the digital world”, village residents say it has brought them little benefit. In interview after interview, residents told Down To Earth (DTE) that the centre neither improved local living conditions nor created jobs. “When the construction is complete, they will not need labourers like us,” says Satish Chand, a local worker.

Residents of the village, however, express a deeper anxiety — over the future of water availability.

India’s digital ambitions are expanding at breakneck speed, and data centres are seen as critical infrastructure to sustain the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Yet their rapid spread poses a serious challenge: these facilities require vast amounts of water to cool servers, and many are being built in regions already grappling with water stress. In such areas, potable water is often diverted for industrial use, leaving economically marginalised residents more vulnerable.

Field visits by DTE to two emerging data centre hubs in Bengaluru and Gautam Buddha Nagar found that while states compete to attract data centre companies with incentives and subsidies, few are assessing the long-term implications for local water security. The companies, in turn, disclose little about their actual consumption, often cloaking figures in vague or incomplete data.

In Tusiana, shopkeeper Rahul Bhatti is one of the few aware of what this might mean. “Our main source of water is groundwater. For now, there is no shortage,” he says. “But when the whole facility becomes operational, it could draw heavily from the aquifers and reduce water available for us.”

Another resident, Satish Chand, admits he barely understands what a data centre does but recalls seeing deep borewells being drilled — “around 200 feet down” — when he worked as a labourer on-site. Yotta Data Services clarified to DTE that no borewell was dug for any construction or operations activity.

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https://www.downtoearth.org.in/science-technology/indias-digital-thirst-data-centres-are-rising-in-water-scarce-regions-and-locals-are-paying-the-price

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