Ever since the announcement came through that Adani was going to build a mega data center with a projected capacity of 1 GW in Visakhapatnam, the Chandrababu Naidu government has been going to town claiming how it was transforming Andhra’s future by attracting investments in AI and cutting edge technologies. While sections of a pliant media have played the investment up, even a cursory look under the sheets reveals a very sobering picture. Like in the past, Naidu and his PR machine had initially managed to sell it through supportive media outlets that this was a multi-billion dollar investment akin to Google setting up labs in Tel Aviv or Austin or New York. Not many even bothered to question that this was primarily a Adani owned enterprise where most of the investment was actually in the form of hardware and equipment purchased somewhere else and installed in the Visakhapatnam location. Essentially a Data Center is a technical warehouse where very little creation happens and even littler employment generation happens.
As the dust started to settle down, concerned citizens groups, serious political and economic analysts and academics started to skeptically examine what was on the platter and serious alarm bells have begun ringing. Along multiple dimensions – economic, environmental, infrastructural, employment wise – the project is problematic. Something that was highlighted by a detailed analytical article published by the reputed Frontline magazine.
While the article itself delves into great depth, It is worthwhile trying to place some of the key concerns raised by public interest groups and the findings of the article side-by-side and also throw light on the PR economy of the development narratives emerging from media-savvy and media-friendly politicians who currently seem on the ascendant.
First off, I think it is important to understand that the project (whether Adani as the primary or Google as the primary) will not mean anything at all to India or Andhra’s AI credentials. There is no development center or a lab associated with it and it at best a real estate transaction. So the argument that somehow it positions Andhra as a technological hub gets blown to bits straightaway. At best it is likely to create a few hundred local jobs at the very lowest levels. Despite past experiences, where IT companies in India have managed to corner prime real state from governments at cut-rate prices while heavily inflating and overstating employment potential, the same mistake has been deliberately and systematically repeated. And juxtaposed against the mind-boggling subsidies being provided, the project makes no fiscal sense at all.
Unlike building a port of a train station, there is no additional infrastructure that is created here for the common good. If anything, there is likely to be serious concerns around the extent of water and electricity usage required by the data center and the impact it is likely to have on local availability of said resources. Even in resource surplus countries like the United States, this has been a hot-button issue that has led to several communities questioning the utility of locating data centers in their towns and neighbourhoods. Not factored in are some additional concerns like noise and incessant humming that is the feature of these monster machines. There are also concerns raised around the physical location of the area being in a protected wildlife zone and a reserve forest area. All the requisite clearances have been given in an ultra-fast mode as if the government fears being exposed if due process is followed. And about consent from the local communities, the less said, the better.
So the real question is why does a certain variety of PR savvy, extremely media friendly politicians who are part of the ruling dispensation (Maharashtra CM Devendra Phadnavis, Chandrababu Naidu are very emblematic of this group) is willing to fritter so much of public resources away in pursuit of prestige projects that have very little benefit for their constituents. The answer lies in the question itself. Most of the politicians in this group have spent enormous money and effort in trying to cultivate for themselves a technocratic image in direct contrast to their competitors who they have partially successfully branded as luddites who do not understand the modern world and how they alone have the chops to navigate it. The reality on the ground whether reflected in GDP numbers or employment figures may paint a completely different picture, but that hardly matters. It is the image that counts. And unfortunately with a media that is increasingly becoming lazy and willing to swallow homilies and latch onto jargon and trends without scientifically examining claims, the image itself becomes a malrepresentative proxy for performance. In a way this is as much an indictment of the self-styled technocrat politician as it is of the media discourse in the country. But the devastating consequences for the public good are becoming too heavy to bear.
AI promises a paradigm shift in the way we humans live and Data Centers are an integral part of the AI value system. The argument is not to shut them down. But when viewed as useful props in a PR battle they result in the type of devastatingly ill-considered decisions of the type we are seeing in Andhra today. At the end of the day any endeavour that prioritizes vague notions of “branding” and “positioning” at the expense of the real lived interest of communities and the environments within which they reside, is just a fool-hardy adventure.
It is also important to not read this current critique as specifically directed against Advani or any specific corporate house (as has also unfortunately become the practice). It is an indictment of an entire culture and eco-system that has unfortunately robbed people of sovereignty in deciding what happens in their own communities and lives.
