By Shri E A S Sarma, Former Secretary to the Government of India
(Reproduced from countercurrents.org)
The Google-Raiden-Adani conglomerate is setting up three hyperscale data centres (each ~ 1 GW) of roughly 2.5-3.0 GW total capacity in and around Vizag, causing extensive environmental damage and gross human rights violations.
Located in a water-scarce area, they will accentuate the already acute water scarcity for the local community.
Why Vizag?
A 1 GW capacity (hyperscale) data centre consumes more than 20 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 30 million litres of water daily. They are heat islands that impact the ambient temperature in their neighbourhood. They also cause noise pollution (https://unu.edu/inweh/news/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints) Wherever they are proposed to be set up, especially in the USA, the local communities are vehemently opposing them.
Faced with such local resistance in the USA, Google has chosen India for its operations, as the local data sovereignty laws and regulations in India are weak, environmental regulation fragile and crony capitalism rampant.
While local authorities in the US are levying additional tariffs on data centres in view of their excessive demand for electricity and water, politicians in India are bending backwards to provide them both electricity and water at heavily subsidised prices. They are prepared to short-circuit regulations to condone the environmental havoc those data centres are causing.
Sops for data centres- Little benefit for people:
Google earns trillions of dollars annually as profits. However, both Andhra Pradesh (AP) government and the Centre are sadly subsidising its operations.
AP has announced tax subventions, capital subsidies, concessional electricity and water tariffs and land at subsidised prices, all adding up to more than Rs 25,000 crores for a 1 GW data centre. The Centre has announced a tax holiday for Google and other “foreign” data centres till 2047, estimated to cost the public exchequer around Rs 95,000 Crores for a 1GW data centre.
For the three Google data centres in and around Vizag, the total subsidies thus add up to Rs 3,00,000-3,60,000 crores! They come at the cost of tax-payers. Where private land is forcibly taken from marginal farmers for meagre compensation, it is those land losers that subsidise the data centres.
For all those sops, what benefits do the data centres bring to the local people?
The State’s political leaders are deliberately misleading people by making tall claims that the Google data centres will provide “lakhs” of jobs, whereas a 1 GW data centre may provide far less than 1000 jobs. Out of it, the local youth may not get anything other than low-paid menial jobs.
AP has enacted a law, AP Employment of Local Candidates in the Industries/Factories Act, 2019, which requires industrial units in the State to reserve upto 75% of jobs for locals and for providing training facilities for them to become eligible for such employment. In a State where crony capitalism reigns high, the State’s politicians, who are more interested in pleasing Google, are reluctant to enforce that law. Nor have they secured any written commitment from Google on the quantum and quality of employment opportunities it will create for the local youth.
The Google data centre complex in and around Vizag with a cumulative capacity of around 2.5-3.0 GW capacity would not only require a matching power generation capacity to maintain round-the-clock power supplies for it but also a dedicated transmission system to convey electricity, the total cost of which may exceed Rs 40,000 crores. Considering that the AP government is heavily subsidising electricity for data centres, the cost of setting up the needed incremental generation and transmission facilities will necessarily be recovered from other electricity consumers in the State and from tax payers.
It is ironic that a domestic consumer in AP belonging to the lowest income bracket pays Rs 1.90 per kwh, whereas the three Google data centres pay only Rs 1 per kwh. It clearly shows how distorted AP’s political leaders’ priorities are!
Human rights violations:
Google has proudly announced its vision, “We’re committed to significantly improving the lives of as many people as possible” (https://about.google/company-info/commitments/) It certainly has no relevance as far as the people of Vizag are concerned.
In Tarulawada village near Vizag, Google’s data centre complex is allotted 267 acres, out of which 111 acres cover lands assigned in the past to landless families, largely dalits. In the seventies, the then government assigned those lands to landless families to empower them by providing them a stable source of livelihood.
The present-day politicians in the State have forcibly taken away those lands from the land assignees by giving them a meagre cash compensation that nowhere compares with the market value of those lands. Taking away land which provides them sustenance and giving them cash by way of meagre compensation amounts to stripping them of their only asset that provides them livelihood and disempowering them. It amounts to a gross violation of their “right to live”, a fundamental right enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution.
At another location in Adivivaram, in the heart of Vizag, 160 acres of lush green forest land on the Simhacalam hill slope is allotted to the Google conglomerate. Construction of structures at that site blocks water inflows along the hill slope into the downstream Mudasarlova reservoir which provides drinking water for the people of Vizag. The Google conglomerate has already started cutting trees that would have otherwise prevented siltation of the reservoir. Once the data centre starts its operations, pollutants from it will contaminate the reservoir. Compounding it is the fact that the data centre itself will place a huge demand for water from the reservoir, creating a serious water crisis for the people in the coming years. The rulers of the State are far too much in a hurry to please Google to be bothered about people’s welfare.
Hyperscale data centres in India appropriate hundreds of acres of land, often under cultivation of small and marginal farmers, mostly dalits. Considering that the average per capita arable land availability in India is hardly 0.5 acres, a hyperscale datacentre of 1 GW capacity occupying about 300 acres displaces 600 marginal farmers, depriving them of their only source of livelihood.
Environmental laws violated:
About 90% of the land allotted to Google in Tarulavada and 100% of it in Adivivaram (see picture below) lie within lands notified under the relevant forest laws of the country. The apex court of India, in their landmark judgement in the well-known Godavarman case, has prohibited diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. Even if exceptional circumstances necessitate appropriation of forest land, the court ordered that alternate lands of the twice the area be identified for compensatory afforestation. Neither in the case of the data centre site at Tarulawada nor in the case of Adavivaram, the State has cared to comply with the forest laws, nor it has shown respect for the apex court’s directions.
(https://www.sakshi.com/telugu-news/andhra-pradesh/ uncontrolled-excavations-simhachalam-hill-name-data-center-2787134)
In addition, Adivivaram is also located within the Eco-Sensitive Zone notified by the Union Environment Ministry around Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, where construction activity is prohibited. The State’s political leadership has not even cared to comply with that statutory notification.
In their anxiety to please Google, and particularly the Adani group which is partnering it, the State’s politicians forced the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority to bend rules, ignore the apex court’s directions, wrongly classify data centres as mere “buildings”, gloss over the understated disclosures on water use and accord statutory environment clearances for the three data centres at breakneck speed, without holding mandatory public consultation processes. Had the State been sensitive to its obligation to protect the environment under Article 48A of the Constitution and adhered to the statutory requirements strictly, it would have held an open public hearing on the project and forwarded one single proposal encompassing all the three data centres for a comprehensive environment impact appraisal by the Union Environment Ministry. The way the State’s leaders have conducted themselves vis-a-vis Google in Vizag speaks volumes about their insensitivity to the statute and their contempt for democratic processes that lie at the core of India’s Constitution.
Had AP’s leaders been responsible enough to recognise the fact that these data centres consume huge quantities of water, creating acute water scarcity in and around Vizag, they would have insisted on Google to meet its water needs from desalination plants, rather than from the city’s water supply system. The environmental clearances given for the three locations of the Google data centre complex make no mention of any desalination plant.
Democracies under corporate influence tend to become “corporatocracies” that work more for private corporate oligarchies than for people.
Carbon footprint:
The three Google data centres require at least 2.5-3.0 GW of power on a round-the-clock basis. It is equivalent to one large power generation complex of around 3 GW capacity fully earmarked for it. In terms of generation capacity, it is larger than NTPC’s Simhadri power station and the adjacent Hinduja power plant, both of which burn coal for generating electricity. Considering that 75-79% of power generation in India is coal-based, it implies a cumulative annual carbon foot-print of more than 20 billion tonnes.
Data sovereignty concerns
India generates nearly 20% of the world’s digital data, with monthly mobile data consumption reaching over 24 GB per user. However, the country only hosts roughly 3% of global data center capacity, meaning a vast majority of its data is stored and processed on foreign servers, which raises concerns about its security implications. What the country needs urgently at this moment is to mobilise indigenous know-how on data processing and AI to move quickly towards self-reliance.
The government at the Centre published a “Data Centre Policy” in 2020 but failed to implement it. As on date, as far as data centres are concerned, neither the Centre nor the State has a well-thought-out policy.
IT companies like Google setting up data centres across the world are largely USA-based. In 2018, the US Congress adopted the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD) Act which obligates all US-based companies to provide access to data stored in their data centres to the US government, irrespective of whether those data centres are located in the USA or outside. This raises serious concerns about the vulnerability of data centres operated by US-based companies in India.
Realising the implications of CLOUD Act, several European nations are strengthening their data sovereignty laws and protocols and developing indigenous capabilities to safeguard national security.
Against that background, it stands to no reason that the Centre and the States should rush into inviting US-based IT companies to set up data centres in India and should further announce a tax holiday for “foreign data centres”.
Global data centre boom, or bubble?
According to some projections, the cumulative global capacity of data centres will reach 200 GW during the next ten years, of which 50% will come up in the USA, 30% in Asia-Pacific and the rest in other regions including India. India alone may soon have 17 GW of data centre capacity.
Trillions of dollars of investment is being poured into the setting up of those data centres, without any certainty of those investments yielding the expected returns, a situation that can be described as “irrational exuberance”, which may point to a bubble that will burst soon.
Even otherwise, there are serious concerns about the sustainability of the present heavily centralised one GW & above “hyperscale” model of data centres that exert enormous pressure on land, electricity and water. The present research effort is towards optimising the use of electricity and water, through hybrid decentralised models based on edge computing, micro-modular data processing, advanced cooling technologies etc. It is possible that data processing and AI based on hybrid decentralised models that cut down electricity and water use by 70% or more will soon replace the present hyperscale model. When that happens, which may be very soon, the present hyperscale data centres will become museum pieces.
In the USA, as already pointed out, local communities are opposing the setting up of hyperscale data centres in their midst, as they not only impose stress on their limited water resources but also lead to thermal and noise pollution. At least one State, Maine has imposed a moratorium on data centres of 20 MW and above capacity and 13 other States are considering similar steps. The New York legislature has passed the Responsible Data Center Development Act, which proposes a one-year moratorium on permits for new, large data centers exceeding 20 MW capacity.
Is India becoming a prey to increasing US dominance in data processing and AI?
The tax incentives and other sops offered to foreign IT companies, mostly US-based companies, by the governments at the Centre and in the States point to the possibility of India fast becoming a prey to rapidly increasing US dominance in the field of data processing and AI.
Even at this belated stage, India should resist US-based IT companies setting up data centres on its soil. Instead, it should mobilise ongoing indigenous R&D effort in data storage, processing and application of AI and formulate a long-term strategy towards realising self-reliance on a war footing. This is important as the value of data systems as an asset is going to increase and AI is going to dominate every field of economic activity. Particularly in defence, AI is going to play a pivotal role in the coming years.
Facing US sanctions, China has adopted the strategy of deploying its public sector to be the primary architect, financier and regulator of AI and data processing. In China, it is the State that primarily funds data storage, processing and AI.
Against this background, in the long run, it is prudent for India to develop data processing/ AI capabilities in the public sector, closely working with Indian start-ups in that field. We need to develop a strong data processing/ AI regulatory framework that is consistent with national security interests. Considering the crucial role that AI is going to play in nation building in the coming years, India cannot afford to compromise its self-reliance in AI by falling prey to foreign dominance in that sector.