30 August,2026 07:55 AM IST | Mumbai | Arpika Bhosale
Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
On a hot and humid Wednesday, we head towards Balkum, Thane, where protests by residents have brought Amazon's hyperscale AI data centre into the national spotlight.
Until then, most Mumbaikars did not know that there was an AI data centre coming up in their backyard. The few who did, might have even shrugged it off with a "So what?" Not the residents of Thane, though.
It was on July 19 that the residents of Majiwada, Balkum, declared a protest. The organisers were mainly from a citizen group (@wakeup.thanekar), but it wasn't just locals. Many from the group say that a lot of Thanekars haven't officially joined the group, partly for fear of falling into trouble and partly because most, they say, don't understand the impact the AI data centre might have.
That's probably because Mumbaikars are used to seeing data centres around us. In November last year, CBRE South Asia Pvt Ltd, India's leading real estate consulting firm, released a report titled "India's Data Centre Market in a New Era", highlighting that Mumbai leads the country's total data centre capacity with a 53 per cent share of the state's total ~1,530 MW in September 2025.
So, why are Thane residents so upset? Well, that's because this project is an AI data centre; India has so far seen only conventional data centres used to store and process data. The Thane project, and another one under construction in Visakhapatnam - also witnessing intense protests since last year - are to be the country's first AI data centres. These are said to consume way more space, water, power, and also generate considerable emissions and heat.
Remember Erin Brockovich? Millennials and Gen X will need no introduction to the American environmental activist who inspired the iconic Julia Roberts movie (Erin Brockovich) about the David-vs-Goliath legal battle by the people of Hinkley, California, against an energy corporation that allegedly contaminated the city's drinking water with carcinogens. In a sign of just how serious the issue is, Brockovich recently joined the fight against AI data centres. In an interview with a US magazine, she said, "Oh my God, this is Hinkley on fricking steroids."
Tushar Chandrakanth Patil is the head of the Balkum Gramastha Mandal and belongs to the Koli community of Balkum village
When construction started, we were told it was an Amazon centre," says Patil, "No one knew that it was an AI data centre."
Patil is a resident of Balkum village; all that's left of it now are the small homes that line the wall of the data centre.
"There was another factory where the data centre is now coming up; it shut in 2016, and many of us - who gave up our land on the assurance of jobs - were left jobless," he recalls. A developer then took up the land but had to file for bankruptcy and abandon their plans.
Patil feels the data centre is not going to help with any jobs for the locals too. "As far as we know there will basic staff, like a guard or something, none of us have been told about any jobs," he says.
The community is part agrarian and part fisherfolk. But with space shrinking in Thane, it has become harder to sustain their original ways. "Right now, there are only 6000 of us left. And just 2000 are active in the protest because people are scared; it's a big company, and we are just fishermen," he says.
[popcorn number="530" desc="Number of counties and municipalities across the US that have restricted new data centres" class="Default"]
Anuradha Rode and Surbhi Das are residents of Majiwada, where a single road is all that separates their housing society from the AI data centre
We had no clue that it was an AI data centre," says Anuradha Rode, who is a part of the Wake Up Thanekar group. A resident of Lodha Luxuria, Rode stands on the terrace of her wing and points towards the construction around the Amazon AI data centre that has become the view from her home.
She recalls how they found out about it being an AI data centre entirely by accident: "A couple of children told their parents that they found a Reddit thread about AI data centres in the US, and it was here that someone asked why Mumbaikars were not making more noise about the project coming up near our homes.
The children told their parents, who then searched on the Internet and found the truth about this construction."
Rode recalls the residents' scramble when this came to light. "An AI data centre is different from a normal data centre. A regular one merely stores data and processes it. If you ask for a recipe, it will search stored data and spit it out. But AI uses machine learning to create new information, such as when we ask it to make a slideshow. This requires a lot more energy," she adds.
This power will come from diesel, Amazon officials told the residents in a meeting with Thane Municipal Corporation officials. "Amazon has said that they will use diesel generators as a backup and build their own grid for electricity. They have also said that they won't use our water, but a coolant system. But we are still concerned; if you stand at the AC external unit outside your home, you can feel a wave of heat emanate from it.
Now imagine this one AC if it were as big as a massive building," Rode says.
This summer, Thane was already baking in 40 degrees Celsius. A cursory search on the Internet throws up IMD warnings for excessive heat in the region.
"What is equally concerning," adds Rode, "is the noise that has been reported by people who live near data centres in the United States. The constant hum has led to a lot of the birds slowly dying out in those areas and also caused headaches to people living nearby. We are in an ecologically rich, sensitive zone; no one is even talking about that yet."
By road, the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary, a designated Ramsar wetland site, is just over 10 km away from Majiwada. Environmentalists and the media had earlier flagged how noise pollution from the construction of the Atal Setu may have led to fewer flamingos in the Sewri wetlands in 2018.
Surbhi Das, who lives in the wing next to Rode's, is exasperated with why there is not enough noise being made about the data centre. "When data centres are being opposed all over the world, why is one coming up right next to us? We have been staying here for so long, doesn't our consent matter?" she asks.
[popcorn number="420 MW" desc="Capacity of the approved data centre in Balkum ,Thane" class="Default"]
Sia Shete, an independent and a financial journalist who reports on US markets, has been voicing her support for Thane residents
Sia Shete is a young financial journalist based in Toronto, who is reporting on the markets in the US. She has been following the fallout from AI data centres and protests by citizen groups in the US closely.
Shete, who lived in one of the many gated societies at Majiwada until she went abroad to pursue her degree and career, feels that the impact of AI data centres is now well-documented in the US, and we need to learn from it. "In the US, people have had to learn the lesson the hard way. We are seeing the environmental impact, which is why local councils are booting out AI data centres. Also, it has been established that companies like Amazon never announce that their project is an AI data centre; and that is how they kind of go under the radar[see Amazon's response in box below]," she says.
In May, US Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to a congressional hearing with jars of brown water, which she said was tap water contaminated due to the construction of Meta's Stanton Springs data centre campus in Georgia.
Over 530 counties and municipalities across the United States have implemented rules to restrict or block new data centres, with nearly 190 of these local measures enacted recently.
True to her vocation, Shete points out the âTax Holiday' recently announced by Finance Minister Nirmal Sitharaman during the budget this year. The FM had said, "Recognising the need to enable critical infrastructure and boost investment in data centres, I propose to provide a tax holiday till 2047 to any foreign company that provides cloud services to customers globally by using data centre services from India. It will, however, need to provide services to Indian customers through an Indian reseller entity,".
"If I were an American tech business, then I would go running to a country that is assuring zero tax on opening a data centre here. To all those who are pro-data centre, I would like you to understand not just about the local resources that will be stripped from you, but also the fact that the construction of these hyperscale data centres in itself is an ecological drain," she says, "Thane is going to no doubt take a hit," she adds.
[popcorn number="53-54 acres" desc="Size of AI data centre plot in Thane" class="Default"]
Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) did not get back to Sunday mid-day with a response on the process of environmental clearances given to Amazon before the newspaper went to print.
In May, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had made a statement with regards the data centre push in Maharashtra during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Switzerland. "The administration should take the initiative and complete land allotment, environmental approvals, building plans and various permissions within the next three months instead of waiting for follow-up from companies. Maharashtra is progressing rapidly in the data centre sector and is moving towards becoming one of the largest data centre investment hubs in the country," Fadnavis told mediapersons present there.
With regard to water resources in the state Fadnavis added, "The power and water required for these data centres are available in abundance in Maharashtra. Therefore, greater emphasis should be laid on simplification of processes and increasing land availability and distribution so that these projects are completed within the prescribed timeframe."
Deeksha Vanguru of the Coalition for AI Regulation has been asking for more transparency for the AI data centre coming up in Visakhapatnam
A month before the Thane protest, citizens in Visakhapatnam held their own protest against the Google-Adani AI data centre coming up on the outskirts of the city at Tarluvada, Adavivaram - Mudasarlova and Rambilli, announced and slated as the biggest one yet by the company outside of the US.
One of the active participants was Deeksha Vanguru, a climate activist who mobilised the citizens and is gathering evidence about what impact the centre will have. "Sundar Pichai and Google announced in October that they're planning to make a data centre, one of the biggest ones outside of the United States, within Visakhapatnam because it is a coastal city," she says.
"They decided that they're going to do that here, and the Andhra Pradesh government welcomed it with open arms because they heard âGoogle'. But they did not do a lot of research beyond that, they did not try to understand what this infrastructure will do to the local community or to the planet," she adds.
Vizag is a city nestled in the Eastern Ghats and is wrapped around by the Bay of Bengal, explains Vanguru. "So, it is very biodiversity-rich. It's a beautiful city with a lot of greenery that we have preserved with a lot of struggles. The environmental clearances for a 400-acre project were given within nine days [applications filed on April 9, granted on April 18]," she says.
Vanguru has been visiting the sites and trying to decode what will be lost. "In June, I went to all three sites to understand what is going on." Right now, Vanguru and her team are compiling a fact-finding report. "The total size of the project is 600 acres, and this is just one of the data centres. Vizag is going to become a 6.5 gigawatt capacity data centre city. What impacts do data centres produce in a climate like India? Who are the actual experts to understand what the pros and cons are? Can we afford this in a country like India? Even if you leave the environmental aspect, what about the cultural aspects?" she asks.
Vanguru gives a good thumb rule to live by: "Why is tech taking over people where people should be taking over tech? This is our question. Ultimately, our people and the planet that keeps us alive comes first as they help us live and survive - we strongly believe in people over profit always," she adds.
Last week, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said that people have not understood the basics or the benefits the data centre will bring and expressed surprise over the claims that the centre was already causing water shortages in the city, pointing out that construction of the project has not even gathered momentum.
The State's HC also refused to grant a stay on the construction of the same.
[popcorn number="2" desc="No. of AI data centres being built in India" class="Default"]
An Amazon spokesperson replied to our queries about the under-construction data centre in Thane
What will the water usage be per day? Is it being used for cooling at all?
The total water use at our Thane facility will be 125 kilolitres per day (KLD). Of that, 10 KLD is for basic human needs, including restrooms and drinking water for employees, and 115 KLD is treated sewage water for landscaping and irrigation, supplied by the Thane Municipal Council (TMC).
Amazon's data centre development in Thane will not use any water for cooling. In fact, we do not currently use water for cooling in any of our data centres in India, and do not draw from the community's drinking or potable water for cooling purposes.
What will be the source of energy for cooling? If non-renewable like diesel, then what are the measures to ensure that the pollutions caused - air, heat - will be curtailed?
We're committed to powering our data centres responsibly and invest in renewable energy projects in India to ensure our power is backed by new clean energy generation. Amazon has invested in 53 solar and wind projects in the country to date. Together, they generate over 4 million megawatt-hours of clean electricity annually in the country - enough to power the equivalent of 1.3 million (13 lakh Indian homes.
What is expected noise to be produced? How will that be curtailed or sent out to the atmosphere around Balkum?
Our Thane data centre will be built and operated in compliance with legal noise limits under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000. We are investing in advanced technology and engineering for industry-leading sound management, including sound-dampening building materials and insulation, strategic placement of equipment, and acoustic enclosures and mufflers where needed.
The Balkum area is surrounded by people and flora and fauna. How will Amazon ensure that another human, neither the water, air, sound levels take a bit?
Amazon has been operating data centres for nearly two decades, and we have always priortised minimising the impact on our communities. We strive to design our facilities to protect the health and welfare of our neighbours.
Amazon data centres around the world are designed and engineered to minimise the impact on our neighbours and the environment. We always strive to be a good and responsible neighbour. That's our commitment to Thane.
Is this an AI Data centre?
Amazon data centres are designed to support the full range of cloud computing services that our customers use, from storage and databases to machine learning and AI. We do not disclose the specific workloads or services that run at individual facilities.
Final statement: We would also like to point out this important section in our Thane blog, subtitled: Our environmental clearances are publicly available
When we construct data centres in India, and around the world, we follow the rules. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report and other supporting documents for the Thane data center site are publicly available on the Indian Government's PARIVESH environmental portal and have been since the date we submitted our application. The Environmental Clearance approval was also published in English and local-language newspapers as required by permit conditions. Amazon remains committed to complying with all applicable laws, regulations, and local permitting requirements wherever we build and operate our data centres.
2°C
Average estimated rise in land surface temperature near AI data centres
' Source: Cambridge-led study titled The Data Heat Island Effect
75 dB (A)
Noise level that Amazon has committed to within a distance of 1 m from their diesel generators. This is akin to the noise of a running vacuum cleaner
' Source: Amazon Balkum EIA report
Anwesha Sen, programme manager (technology and policy) at Takshashila Institution, has written a paper on building data centres and analysing state policies and the growing ecosystem
Anwesha Sen's paper on AI infrastructure in states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu was published in 2025, and she says things have picked up speed since then. "The main issue right now for India in the data centre ecosystem is one of resource allocation. We know that data centres will require some amounts of water, some electricity. How much that actually amounts to that differs on the type of data centre and also the capacity. But what we're seeing now across states is there seems to be a sort of competition in terms of subsidies, incentives, and land being allocated," she says.
She points out there is no national policy and things seem disjointed for now, "There doesn't seem to be a national road map for all of this, so there's no particular threshold. Gujarat has a draft data centre policy, which does lay out some conditions and a bunch of incentives across the board," she says. "It could be argued that India has very low data centre capacity right now. It's less than 2 gigawatts compared to the US and China, which are far, far ahead," she adds.
But Sen believes it is the need of the hour, "And as we move towards digitisation and building AI models within the country especially, we do need more data centres," she adds.
Transparency though is a huge problem, she feels, "whether that's with Vizag or with Mumbai". Given all these incentives, there's also a lack of transparency around how these data centres are being built, what are the measures in place for sustainability and, say, recycled water. These technologies exist; you can be sustainable, you can have renewable energy," she says.
She reiterates the need for a national data centre policy, "There was a draft in 2020, which was never formalised. If I'm not wrong, it's being reworked right now," she adds.
A few countries in the Global South have been able to bring regulations, points out Sen. "Malaysia has issued a moratorium on data centres. So, they have also banned certain types of water-intensive data centres," she adds.
In July, after resource scrutiny, new projects in Johor, Malaysia, must demonstrate their electricity sourcing, with renewable energy increasingly becoming a prerequisite for approval. Late last year, the state implemented a blanket ban on two categories of extremely water-intensive data centres, which can require as much as 50 million litres daily, equivalent to the capacity of 20 Olympic swimming pools.
Sen praises citizen participation as well. "On a positive note, we're seeing so much conversation around sustainability in data centres. I think that's one place where civil society has done really well, so, there is time to course-correct. If a policy comes through in the next couple of months, that would really help with aligning this tech infrastructure with sustainability requirements," she adds.
"According to IBM, conventional data centres are more likely to be designed for central processing units (CPUs). Whereas AI-ready data centres require high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) and IT infrastructure considerations, such as advanced storage, networking, energy and cooling capabilities. Often, the sheer number of GPUs necessary for AI use cases also requires far more square footage.
The high computational power, advanced networking, and vast storage systems in AI data centres require massive amounts of electrical power and advanced cooling systems to avoid outages, downtime and overload. Goldman Sachs anticipates that AI will drive a 165 per cent increase in data centre electricity demand by 2030. And McKinsey's analysis suggests that the annual global demand for data centre capacity might reach 171 to 219 gigawatts (GW). The current demand is 60 GW.
To meet these intense energy consumption and cooling requirements, some AI data centres employ a high-density setup.
For example, liquid cooling often uses water rather than air cooling to transfer and dissipate heat. It offers greater efficiency in handling high-density heat and improved power usage effectiveness (PUE) - a metric used to measure data centre energy efficiency. Another cooling method, hot and/or cold aisle containment, organises server racks to optimise airflow and minimise the mixing of hot and cold air".
