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Civil rights organisation Human Rights Forum (HRF) has condemned the Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to construct a massive Google-Adani Center in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli districts despite resistance against Data Centers from cities like Indianapolis and Berlin.
HRF, issued the statement a few days after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led state government on Tuesday, October 14, announced the Memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Google and the Andhra government.
On Tuesday, at the MoU signing, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu congratulated his son, IT Minister Nara Lokesh, and thanked PM Modi for their role in bringing the data centre to Vizag. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called it a “momentous occasion.”
But HRF has raised concerns. “Far from being the promised engine of jobs, green growth and digital progress, as is being projected by its proponents, this 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,” it stated.
The AP government has allocated a total of 480 acres - 200 acres in Tarluvada and 120 acres at Adavivaram and Mudasarlova villages in Visakhapatnam district and 160 acres at Rambilli in Anakapalli district for the establishment of a one-gigawatt (GW) data center cluster and a subsea optical fibre cable landing station.
“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,” HRF’s statement read.
The civil society group also pointed out that groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall and climate variability have already created acute water stress in a city like Visakhapatnam.
They also brought up the lack of cumulative Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and said no such report has been made public.
HRF also brought up how 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 logistical machinery used in Gaza’s mass slaughter. It has shattered any pretense of corporate ethics and is deeply embedded in a genocidal campaign,” it said.
