There is competition among Indian states to welcome multi-billion dollar data centres with subsidies, tax holidays and electricity grid and water priorities. But does this translate into jobs, or some other form of social service payments for the local communities. “No one is looking into that,” says Sharmila Chavaly, a former civil servant and an expert on infrastructure projects.

“All we are looking at is, how can I incentivise a data centre to be set up in my state? We are not looking at what are the commitments we can get for this, because when we give, say, a tax holiday for 20 to 30 years, when we give them grid connection priority, etc., we need to look at certain commitments from them,” she said to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast discussion.

Data centres require a lot of electricity and water to cool down the equipment, resource ...