Mere data ke darbar mein: India's AI data centre rush, and the FOSS enthusiast's hidden stake

India is currently experiencing the largest data centre construction wave in its history. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Reliance have collectively committed over $95 billion to upcoming Indian cloud and AI infrastructure. The Union Budget 2026-27 introduced a 21-year tax holiday (i.e., zero corporate tax through 2047) to sweeten the deal for foreign hyperscalers willing to set up shop here. Similarly, the IndiaAI Mission has pledged over ₹10,300 crore for AI compute infrastructure. We generate 20% of the world's data, but store just 3% domestically. The government has rapidly decided that this gap, especially in light of data sovereignty concerns, must be closed at almost any cost. I intend to use this talk to drive the question of whether you, among the audience, as someone who builds, uses, or cares about FOSS, should be concerned about these server farms you will probably never visit?

India’s data centre policy over the coming decade is clear in that it advocates for increased capacity, greater investment, and more incentives. At least 15 states are competing among each other to attract data centre operators with land grants, electricity duty waivers, and relaxed regulatory requirements. I believe it is fair to say that data centres are now seen as critical infrastructure of India's digital future, on par with highways and power plants, though they lack the same level of public scrutiny:

• India's environmental assessment framework (the EIA Notification 2006) does not mention data centres at all. For example, a 300 MW hyperscale facility can be planned, built, and operated without its full energy, water, or carbon footprint ever being formally assessed under any binding legal instrument.

• Contemporary community opposition in the United States, where this boom arrived earlier, has already blocked or delayed projects worth $98 billion through court reversals, organised resistance, and calls for moratoria, primarily because these questions were raised early enough.

• There is a quiet irony in this framing of postcolonial digital independence, because the remedy of building data centres here through oligopolists on a tax holiday returns little to the public exchequer, and begs the question of whether the coloniser has moved closer.

I fear we are repeating that mistake here, but faster and with less oversight. I strongly believe the software powering these data centres should be open, auditable, and community-governed, rather than locked into proprietary hyperscaler ecosystems. Moreover, the FOSS ecosystem has already developed tools like CodeCarbon, Kepler, and the Green Software Foundation's Carbon Aware SDK to measure and reduce environmental costs. India has created immense demand for digital infrastructure, and that demand will persist. What we can demand in return—and I believe the FOSS community is well-placed to lead—is accountability: open data on energy and water use, mandatory environmental assessments, and community involvement for those who will bear the brunt of these new policies.

I'd like to awaken this conscience among a FOSS audience through this talk and discuss this catachresis of "openness" at a time when the infrastructure beneath our software is being built in the dark!

Here is a proposed (read: provisional) outline of my talk:

1. The data centre gold rush in India, through old and new policies (~5 minutes)

   • Scale of investment, numbers, and existing infrastructure

   • The sovereignty argument and FOSS's parallels

   • What does the 2047 tax holiday unlock for stakeholders?

2. Costs of setting up data centres, and present-day movements elsewhere (roughly 5-10 minutes)

   • The EIA Notification 2006, regulatory frameworks, and current approaches towards green energy

   • Electricity and water costs

   • How the U.S. and Europe are faring

3. How does FOSS belong, and why should you care about data centres as a FOSS enthusiast? (~5 minutes)

   • The case for community-centric involvement and auditability

   • How can FOSS proponents advance the data sovereignty discourse?

   • Open data on energy and water consumption is a FOSS value, not just an environmental one

4. Bonus points, miscellaneous discussions, and Q&A (~5 minutes, at most)

If you managed to read till the end, here's some art: https://x.com/Malicartoonist/status/2035561628960473410

• information about public policy incentives granted by the Indian government towards hyperscaler data centres in the upcoming decade for stakeholders in the world of data;

• that the current lack of regulatory barriers means there is almost no corresponding environmental accountability written into law, and that such gaps need closing;

• that there are communities bearing the costs of this infrastructure via depleted groundwater and opaque land acquisition, and they deserve open data and a seat at the table

• a brief discussion about open source tools for measuring and reducing the environmental cost of computation, and how they tie into this boom through the FOSS philosophy's values of openness and accountability, and through India's sovereignty angle