The world is now racing towards artificial intelligence. All countries are chasing the power of machine intelligence. India has also joined this race. Domestic investors are investing billions of dollars to set up AI data centers. International tech companies are also now heading to India. This is accelerating the country’s digital computing power. However, with this widespread expansion in the tech world, serious social, environmental and economic consequences have emerged. A populous nation like India is already facing water, electricity and land crises. In this situation, the country is inviting serious consequences through AI data centers. Tech companies are fulfilling their objectives by grabbing the land of poor farmers, especially the backward classes, at a low price. The only livelihood is lost to small farmers. Such huge infrastructure is also destroying the local geography. Forests, hills and greenery are being destroyed. Ecosystems are at risk. The problem does not stop there. The promise of large corporate jobs to the youth is also failing. As huge tech hubs are being run on the basis of automation, employment dreams are not fulfilled.
India joins the race:
There is a kind of mad rush going on in the world to build AI/data centers. Unfortunately, India has also joined this race. According to some estimates, the capacity of data centers worldwide will reach 200 gigawatts in the next 10 years. 50 percent of this will be in the Americas, 30 percent in the Asia-Pacific region and the rest in other regions including India. Data centers are known to be large energy consumers of water and electricity. A 200 GW data center will require 1,200 TWh (terawatt hour) of electricity and 100 million cubic meters of water per year. Building such a large-scale data center requires trillions of dollars in investment. But no one knows what kind of financial benefits will be obtained from such investments. So it would not be an exaggeration to say that this will emerge as another economic problem.
Water scarcity, power shortage pressure to increase:
Some data center projects in the US have faced local protests. This is creating heat stress and concerns over water scarcity and power supply in the said areas. Therefore, IT companies like Google are shifting their projects to developing countries like India. In India, politicians are coming forward to give incredible tax breaks to AI/data center promoters. It also provides huge concessions on land, water and electricity. Ironically, the Union Finance Minister has also announced a ‘tax holding’ for foreign data centers till 2047. This decision does not seem to have been taken on the basis of a careful assessment of the social value and social benefits derived from the data centers. It seems that the subsidies and assistance given to AI centers in India can be added to almost half of the total investment in them. This is a mockery of the judgment of domestic promoters who take investment risks for the sake of profit.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that AI/data centers will provide employment in large numbers to local youth at various levels or provide training facilities for jobs. In countries like India, local governments are forcibly displacing hundreds of small farmers from their lands, which are their main source of livelihood, to set up AI centers. Many of the displaced belong to the most backward classes. The so-called compensation they are getting is nominal, which is not at all comparable to the market value of their land.
Backward classes to lose land:
According to the current scenario, while AI centers are coming to India, these backward classes are now deprived of the only land allotted by the previous government. The serious mental anguish faced by these unfortunate landless people is not understood by the data center promoters earning crores or today’s politicians who put personal interests above the public interest. Four 1-1.5 gigawatt data centers are being set up in the currently densely populated and water-stressed areas of the east coast of India, which is creating a serious water crisis in the said area. In urban areas, they are increasing the drinking water crisis. In rural areas, they are wasting water meant for agricultural land. In a country like India, the race to build such data centers has become so intense that the state governments are turning a blind eye and bringing a terrible threat to the environment. They are sacrificing society for personal interests. In one such AI center project in Visakhapatnam, project managers are cutting down lush forests and starting construction on a green area. They have stopped the flow of water to the water reservoir that provides drinking water to the city residents. Once the data center is up and running, it will definitely pollute the groundwater.
On the other hand, this data center will consume a lot of water, which will further aggravate the water crisis in the local community. In the US, some IT companies have recently signed a deal with the Pentagon despite protests from employees. Outside the US, this has raised concerns about data sovereignty, as the US Cloud Act, 2018 and other data laws empower law enforcement agencies to compel IT companies in the US or abroad to disclose data such as emails, files, communications stored on servers. The Indian government is not at all concerned about the security risks. In this situation, India needs to take necessary decisions on such AI data centers based on a proper assessment of social cost and social benefits.
