Amaravati: The Human Rights Forum (HRF) has raised an alarm at the Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to enable the construction of a massive Google-Adani Data Center complex in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli districts with investments worth several billion dollars.
In a statement to media on Saturday, October 18, HRF has stated that far from being the promised engine of jobs, green growth and digital progress, as is being projected by its proponents, the project represents a looming environmental and economic disaster.
“It is an enterprise that risks irreversible ecological damage, massive public resource diversion and deepening corporate capture of resources under the guise of technological advancement,” read the statement made by Y Rajesh, HRF AP state general secretary, and VS Krishna, HRF AP and Telangana coordination committee member.
Google and Adani have been approved to establish a one-gigawatt (GW) Data Center cluster spanning three sites across the two districts, along with a subsea optical-fibre cable landing station to be developed by Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd.
To enable this, the AP government has, through GO MS No 40 dated October 11, allocated a total of 480 acres – 200 acres in Tarluvada, 120 acres at Adavivaram and Mudasarlova villages in Visakhapatnam district, and 160 acres at Rambilli in Anakapalli district.
The ecological impact of data centers
The activists stated that data centers of this scale are notoriously water and energy-hungry, consuming billions of litres annually for cooling and maintenance globally.
The activists observed that in Visakhapatnam, where groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall and climate variability have already created acute water stress, such a project will almost certainly intensify the crisis, diverting precious water from local residents and amounting to a grave injustice.
“Experiences from similar projects, such as Google’s Data Center in Uruguay, show that these facilities often generate toxic waste, emit greenhouse gases and deliver negligible local benefit. Given Vizag’s hot climate, the proposed complex would require even more water-intensive cooling systems, further lowering groundwater tables and risking contamination of local water sources through chemical runoff and waste discharge,” the activists pointed out.
Massive energy consumption
They raised another critical concern, being energy consumption, where a one-gigawatt facility would demand enormous amounts of electricity, equivalent to powering a mid-size city with lakhs of homes, straining an already overburdened grid.
“Google’s claims that this hyper-scale facility will run on 100 percent renewable energy are technically untenable and are a false assertion. The state’s grid cannot supply uninterrupted renewable power without fossil-fuel backup, which makes the project’s so-called ‘green’ credentials a deceptive façade. In reality, data centers of this scale depend heavily on fossil fuels during peak demand, thereby generating massive carbon emissions and undermining global climate goals,” they stated.
Global outcry against data centers
HRF states that communities around the world have mobilised against data center projects, with many of them being far smaller than the one being planned in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli.
“In recent months, public resistance has forced Google to abandon data center plants in Indianapolis and Berlin, underscoring a growing global recognition that these facilities pose unacceptable ecological and social risks that are often masked by the rhetoric of digital progress,” the statement read.
HRF pointed out that other big tech giants have likewise been forced to drop or scale back data center projects across the Americas and Europe due to strong public opposition.
“It appears that Google has therefore moved its data center plans to the global south, clearly because of weaker regulatory safeguards and stronger political pliability,” HRF feels.
HRF also pointed out the case of Mekaguda village in Telangana, where the locals alleged that Microsoft’s under-construction 100 MW data center has encroached upon common land and contaminated the nearby Tungakunta lake by dumping industrial waste, adversely affecting cattle, crops and livelihoods.
“Vizag lies along a cyclone-prone and climate-sensitive coastline. The Madhurawada hills and adjoining lowlands already bear the scars of rampant real estate expansion that has stripped tree cover and disrupted natural drainage systems. Establishing a high-energy, heat-intensive complex of this magnitude in such a terrain is ecologically reckless,” HRF stated.
Lack of transparency and people’s consultation
“As far as we know, no cumulative Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been made public. The State Level Expert Appraisal Committee’s ‘clearance’ appears to have been issued without substantive evaluation, continuing a pattern of all-too-familiar bureaucratic rubber-stamping that prioritises corporate timelines over ecological prudence and public accountability,” HRF claimed.
The activists also felt that the proposed sites for the data center campus have been earmarked through opaque land-pooling and acquisition mechanisms, shrouded in secrecy and devoid of transparency.
“There are reports that local farmers and small landholders are being coerced by intermediaries and local officials to ‘voluntarily’ relinquish their lands. HRF is deeply concerned by the complete absence of meaningful community consultation. The project’s hurried announcement and approval reveal a top-down, exclusionary approach that side-steps local consent and democratic participation,” the statement read.
The promise of creating jobs
HRF disputes Google touting the project as a step towards making India a ‘digital hub.’ The state government’s claim that this project will generate thousands of jobs is also disputable.
“The reality is that profits will overwhelmingly flow to multinational shareholders, not to the local population. Data centers are highly automated and once operational, they create only a few hundred long-term positions, most of which are highly specialised technical roles filled by external recruits. Local employment will be temporary and low-skill, limited to construction and routine maintenance work,” HRF states.
HRF also rubbishes the claims of indirect employment as bogus since data centers are closed, machine-driven facilities – a warehouse of computers – that have negligible linkages to the local economy.
“What Vizag and Anakapalli will inherit instead are the externalities like energy burden, pollution, land loss and social displacement. The bulk of the economic benefit will flow outward to global investors, infrastructure conglomerates and distant corporate supply chains headquartered elsewhere,” the activists alleged.
Citing Google’s 2023 Data Center Impact report for Loudoun County, Virginia, which underscored this stark imbalance, the activists noted that its two data centers at Ashburn and Leesburg together and only 400 people are currently employed, despite generating roughly 3,100 indirect jobs.
“These figures highlight how minimal direct employment accompanies massive capital investment. Likewise, Meta’s upcoming two-gigawatt AI Data Center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, being built at a staggering cost of USD 10 billion, is projected to create barely 500 permanent positions once operational,” the statement read.
Fiscal burden on the state’s exchequer
“The AP government has extended an extraordinarily generous package of non-fiscal and fiscal incentives to Google in the form of tax exemptions, land allocation, discounted tariffs and reimbursements for water, power and infrastructure amounting to an astounding Rs 22,002 crore over 20 years. Such corporate giveaways divert scarce public resources away from essential sectors like healthcare, education and rural development, thereby undermining the right to equitable development,” HRF notes.
In a region like Visakhapatnam, where youth unemployment is high, HRF believes that public investment should be directed towards sustainable, community-rooted industries that generate livelihoods and build local resilience, not resource-guzzling behemoths that exacerbate inequality.
Digital sovereignty, data privacy
“Establishing a hyper-scale Google facility effectively places the state’s critical digital infrastructure, including governance, welfare and security data, within the private network of a multinational corporation. This centralises control over data, cloud services and AI infrastructure in corporate hands, in effect outsourcing the backbone of public systems to an entity driven by profit, and not public interest,” read the statement.
“The implications for public accountability, privacy and democracy are profound. In an era when governments increasingly depend on cloud platforms to deliver essential services, ceding infrastructural control to Google compromises both the state’s autonomy and the digital rights of citizens,” HRF cautions.
Citing Amnesty International, the activists stated that the concentration of digital power in big tech companies like Google enables widespread surveillance, data exploitation and systemic privacy invasions that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations.
“A data and AI hub of this magnitude would process vast amounts of personal and behavioural data, potentially fuelling algorithmic biases that could perpetuate discrimination along caste, gender and religious lines in India. In a country where digital divides are stark, this could widen inequalities, with residents having little control over how their data is used or monetised,” HRF observes.
“The lack of transparency in this deal – announced with much fanfare but containing scant details on mitigation measures, safeguards or accountability- echoes global frustrations with tech giants’ secretive operations,” HRF further cautions.
“Google’s proposed 1 GW DataCenter campus in Visakhapatnam, backed by a multibillion-dollar investment and cloaked in the rhetoric of ‘green growth and ‘digital transformation’, represents not progress but a looming catastrophe of social and ecological injustice. The reality beneath a huge public-relations campaign that has been unleashed over the past week is one of land dispossession, ecological destruction and corporate capture of public resources,” the statement read.
Google and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza
HRF believes that genuine technological progress must be decentralised, sustainable and anchored in local autonomy, not centralised, extractive, destructive and dominated and controlled by Big Tech.
“Google is no ‘neutral tech’. In the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, through ‘Project Nimbus’ and its cloud-AI contracts with the Israeli military, Google is an active enabler, powering the surveillance, targeting, and enabling the logistical machinery used in Gaza’s mass slaughter. It has shattered any pretence of corporate ethics and is deeply embedded in a genocidal campaign,” HRF alleges.
“Even amid Gaza’s famine, the company allowed Israeli state propaganda ads on YouTube, falsely claiming ‘there was food’. Its tech amplifies apartheid, whitewashes starvation and ethnic cleansing, turning algorithms into accomplices and silencing the truth. As Gaza burns and starves, Google counts its profits, its technology complicit in the machinery of genocide,” HRF says, accusing Adani of enmeshing in the brutal war economy, tied to Israel’s military infrastructure through its joint venture with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer.
HRF demands immediate halt
HRF urged the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government in AP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government at the Centre, to immediately halt all land acquisition and environmental clearance processes for the proposed Google Data Center in Vizag and Anakapalli districts until a transparent, participatory and legally compliant review is undertaken.
“All project related documents including the memoranda of understandings (MOU), power and water allocation agreements, assessments, compensation frameworks and environmental impact reports must be placed in the public domain without delay,” HRF demanded, reiterating that true progress cannot be built on secrecy or corporate collusion, but only through a due democratic procedure and sustainable development, anchored firmly in equity, environmental justice and respect for the rights of people.
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