NEW DELHI: When Google broke ground on its data centers in Andhra Pradesh in late April, the project was celebrated as a landmark investment in India’s digital future. But weeks later, a grimmer picture is emerging of the environmental and livelihood risks the project may pose to some of the country’s most vulnerable groups.
Located in Visakhapatnam district on the east coast of southern India, the upcoming artificial intelligence hub is part of Google’s $15 billion investment plan in India between 2026 and 2030. The project will be the tech giant’s first of its kind in the country and the largest outside the US.
The region where it will emerge is a forested, hilly area with small fishing settlements, agrarian villages and land that 50 years ago was awarded to the Dalit community — one of India’s most marginalized, who, under the traditional caste system, had for generations been excluded from land ownership.
About 200 of the almost 500 acres of land earmarked for the AI hub’s three data centers — in Tarluvada, Adavivaram and Rambilli villages — belongs to Dalit families. Activists say the families were pressured to sell their land for a fraction of its market value.
“They were given this land around 1970, when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. There was a very big scheme, a nationwide scheme, of giving land to landless people. Many of these people here, where the Google data center is being set up in Tarluvada village in Vishakhapatam, they were all given pattas (occupation rights) at that time,” said Dr. E.A.S. Sarma, India’s former power secretary-turned activist, who has been advocating against the data center construction.
“Land is being given to the Google data center at a very low price, and the land is being taken away from these Dalits and other small landholders at a very low price, not the market price. I calculated it. It’s less than one-fifth of the market value. Indirectly, these Dalits and the small people are subsidizing Google’s data center. It is very sad. Google earns trillions of dollars of profits every year.”
While Dalit families — who make up about 20 percent of the local population — fear displacement, others in the area and in neighboring Visakhapatnam city raise the issues of deforestation, environmental hazards and water, as the 1 gigawatt project may consume millions of liters of water a day in a region where scarcity has long been a problem.
“Three data centers — one in Tarluvada , one in Rambilli and one in the heart of the city on the Simhachalam Hill — are at the center of controversy, with people worried about a grave environmental crisis ... if you take the Tarluvada Google data center, 90 percent of the area is located in an area notified as a forest,” Sarma said.
“When you clear the trees, siltation takes place. Siltation means the reservoir capacity will come down. And this data center will consume quite a bit of water from the reservoir, depriving the people of Visakhapatnam of their own drinking water ... it will create a serious water problem in Visakhapatnam and its surroundings.”
Another issue, Sarma said, is that data centers are not only large electricity consumers, but also produce highly fluctuating loads, which may pose difficulties for other users of the local electricity grid: “It stresses our water supplies, it stresses electricity supplies, our land and the Dalits — their land, their livelihood.”
The Human Rights Forum, a grassroots organization focusing on state accountability, displacement, environmental justice and the rights of marginalized communities, said there are growing fears about the Google project among locals.
Dalit farmers and residents of the urban areas of Visakhapatnam have begun to organize localized protests and public meetings related to the project, environmental concerns and displacement fears.
V. S. Krishna, the group’s coordinator in Visakhapatnam, told Arab News that “there’s a lot of anger,” as people have received no clarity on the region’s future after the proposed launch of the massive data center hub.
“There is no real information available in the public domain, and no information on where they want to get the water from; no information on where they want to, how and where they want to get the power from; no information about how they want to mitigate the previous environmental concerns — they are very secretive about it.”
