All Things Policy India's Tryst with AI Data Centres
Aug 29, 2025
Anwesha Sen from the Takshashila Institution discusses India's burgeoning AI data center ecosystem. She highlights the crucial role of data centers in enhancing India's tech capabilities and reducing foreign dependency. The conversation delves into current and future data center capacities, forecasting a leap from 1.3 to 17 gigawatts by 2030. Anwesha also examines the challenges related to power transmission and renewable energy, underscoring the necessity for public-private partnerships to navigate these hurdles effectively.
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Data Centres Are The Backbone Of AI
- Data centres are central to AI because they store, process and transfer the training and real-time data that drive model outputs.
- India's AI progress depends on expanding domestic data-centre capacity alongside global cloud services.
Strategic Need Versus Technical Sufficiency
- Technically India can use foreign cloud services but geopolitical risks make domestic capacity strategically important.
- India needs a calibrated plan to build data centres for critical needs and for reducing latency beyond tier-one cities.
Avoid Knee-Jerk Protectionism
- Geopolitical outages and platform failures push arguments toward protectionism, but blanket protectionism is harmful.
- India must balance strategic autonomy with pragmatic openness to global cloud services.