India wants its data stored at home. Its biggest new home is a city short of water.

Every photo you back up, every UPI payment, every reel you scroll is stored somewhere. That somewhere is a data centre: a giant hall of computers that never switches off. Not at night. Not on Diwali.

India accounts for nearly a fifth of the world's data. It has only about 3 percent of the world's data centre capacity to keep it in.

Data centres aren't measured in floors or square feet. They're measured in electricity. 100 megawatts is enough to power a small town.

All of India's data centres together draw under 2,000 megawatts. That's everything the country has built so far, across Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and the rest.

Now look at the last bar. One state has signed up more than three times that, mostly along one stretch of coast.

In August, Andhra Pradesh's IT minister, Nara Lokesh, told the state assembly that the Visakhapatnam data centre push had hit its target: projects adding up to 6,500 megawatts, in and around Vizag.

The biggest name is Google. Its $15 billion AI hub, spread over three sites near the city, is its largest outside America. The groundbreaking was on April 28, 2026. Partial operations are targeted for 2028. Reliance has a cluster of its own planned.

A data centre needs two things in huge amounts: electricity and water. The state says the electricity must be at least 70% green.

The water is harder. Vizag is already short of it.

Vizag needs about 400 million litres of water a day. It gets 320, and 90 million of those go to industry. That's the municipal corporation's own count, from August.

In August, the corporation set up a call centre just to book water tankers. In September, about 6,000 residents of 1,400 flats in MVV City went four days without water and sat in protest outside the water office in Yendada.

Mudasarlova, a reservoir that was once a main source of the city's drinking water, has nearly dried up. One of the data centre parks is coming up about 120 metres from it. The companies building there say nothing will be discharged into it.

So how much water will the data centres need? The state has answered that three times.

Water for big projects is counted in TMC, short for a thousand million cubic feet. One TMC is about 28,300 million litres. Here is what officials have said, turned into litres a day.

• The IT ministerNara Lokesh · State assembly · Aug 2026233ML a dayAbout 3 TMC a year for all 6,500 megawatts, "under current technology". That's enough drinking water for about 17 lakh people.
• The Chief Minister ReportedN Chandrababu Naidu · As reported, Sep 2026388ML a dayAbout 5 TMC for five hyperscale data centres. That's close to everything Vizag needs in a day.
• The information departmentK S Viswanathan · Director, AP I&PR · Sep 2026155ML a dayAbout 3.25 TMC if the centres were water-cooled. About 2 TMC after Google chose air cooling and Reliance planned to use desalinated seawater.

The numbers differ partly because plans changed. Google now says its campuses will be cooled by air. Project details reported by PTI put its freshwater use across all three sites below what an Olympic swimming pool holds. Lokesh points out that a thermal power plant of the same size uses about ten times more water than a data centre.

Three numbers, one source. All of them point to the same place.

The state's plan is a dam on the Godavari called Polavaram. About 25 TMC a year is meant for Vizag, with 6 TMC of it set aside for industry. That's roughly six times what the city gets today.

Lokesh says the data centres will draw from that industrial share through their own pipelines, and that no water meant for homes will be diverted. He told the assembly the city's drinking water from Polavaram would arrive within 18 months, and that a 100 million litre a day desalination plant is being set up.

On paper, there's room for everyone. The catch is the date.

1. 2004
   Work on Polavaram begins
2. 2019
   72% complete

   By the current Chief Minister's account.
3. Dec 2021
   Completion target

   Stated by the state's irrigation minister at the time. It passed.
4. Mar 2027
   Current completion target

   Set by Chief Minister Naidu after a site visit in July 2026.
5. Early 2028
   Polavaram drinking water for Vizag

   "Within 18 months", Lokesh told the assembly in August 2026.
6. 2028
   Google's partial operations

   Target reported by CBC.

   Data centre

The data centres have a start date. The dam has had several.

And before any of it, someone had to sign off on the data centres themselves. For one park, that took nine days.

Before anything large is built in India, a state panel checks what it will do to the air, the water and the land around it. It's called an environmental clearance.

For a 1,000 megawatt data centre park at Tarluvada, the file went in on April 9, 2026. Andhra's State Environment Impact Assessment Authority approved it on April 18.

There's a reason it could move that fast. Data centres have no category of their own in India's clearance rules. In August, the Union environment ministry told the Rajya Sabha they are assessed as building and construction projects. On paper, a hall of computers that never switches off takes the same route as a large apartment complex.

Gutta Rohith, a lawyer with the Human Rights Forum, read the clearance. He says it doesn't say whether the water will be desalinated, drawn from rivers or pumped from the ground. It doesn't say how much the cooling will use.

A resident asked the Andhra Pradesh High Court to pause the project. He argued the clearance covers putting up the building, not running a data centre. The court didn't stop the work. It told the state to make sure every approval was in place, and to explain them. Construction carried on.

So the city is offering land, water and fast paperwork. Here is what the deal looks like on paper.

States compete hard for projects like this one. Here is what Andhra offered for Google's data centre, as reported by The News Minute.

Some of this matters less than it looks. If Google's campuses run on air, a water discount saves it little. The power discount matters more, because electricity is a data centre's biggest running cost, and these campuses will run for decades.

In return, the state promised one number louder than any other: jobs.

When the deal was announced in October 2025, Lokesh said Google's investment would create employment for 1.88 lakh people. State assessments described that as direct and indirect jobs.

This October, Vizag's own MP, Sribharat, gave a different number for the jobs inside the data centre. A few hundred. Maybe 1,000, as a rough ballpark.

He isn't against the project. He thinks it's good for Vizag. He's counting something different.

Inside a data centre, the machines mostly run themselves. A small crew watches screens, swaps out parts and keeps the cooling running, around the clock. That's why the jobs inside are counted in hundreds. It's also why each one costs so much.

The rest of 1.88 lakh is jobs around the building: construction crews (the state expects about 4,000 a year while it goes up), suppliers, and businesses that open nearby. Google is also training more than 1,000 local people in facility operations, construction and AI.

And then there's the big bet: that once Google comes, other companies follow. The state has seen that bet pay off before.

In 1998, Chandrababu Naidu, then Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, met Bill Gates. Soon after, Microsoft set up its first development centre outside the US, in Hyderabad.

Today about 10,000 Microsoft employees work in Hyderabad. The city grew into one of India's biggest tech hubs.

Announcing Google, Lokesh compared it to Microsoft's arrival in Hyderabad. Naidu is Chief Minister again.

Software is written by people. A data centre runs machines. The pull effect can still happen: Google's hub also brings an undersea cable landing to Vizag, the kind of link that draws other tech companies. But those jobs have to grow around the building, not inside it.

The bet is the same. What's arriving is not.

Which brings it back to the city, and its taps.

India's need is real. It makes a fifth of the world's data and keeps little of it at home. A data centre near Vizag could store your photos, run your payments and power the AI tools you'll use next.

The bet is real too. Cheap land and power in exchange for jobs that mostly grow around the building, and a hope that others follow.

What isn't settled is the water. Three official numbers. One dam, under construction since 2004. A city that today gets one litre in five less than it needs.

Next time a city is promised a data centre, ask one thing back. Where will the water come from?

This newdle is updated as the story moves. New developments will be added as new stops at the end.