Data centres are here to stay, though even in the United States, which is the mother of much of the technology involving such centres, people living around them are uncomfortable. A Gallup survey as recent as May 2026 found that 71% of Americans opposed the construction of an AI data centre in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed to it. A Reuters/Ipsos poll around the same time revealed two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans opposed having an AI data centre built in their own community. President Trump is livid, but the public is not going to relent.Widespread hunger for AI all over the world makes the demand for data centres insatiable. People protest, but eventually they come to terms with the inevitable. This is the story of development in the modern era.The Indian sceneWe have opened our doors wide. The statistics are revealing. In 2020, our operational data centre capacity was a measly 375 MW. In the last financial year it was around 1600 MW. By 2030 it will grow to more than 6000 MW and some forecasts predict that by 2032 it will balloon to 13,500 MW.The real estate demand too will increase. The data centres now occupy 27 million square feet. It will be around 101 million square feet by 2030 – roughly equal to the entire land area of Panaji, Goa (8.2 sq km).We too will protest, but governments will move on, or rather, the capitalist juggernaut will move on. No ruling dispensation in India can act against international big businesses and Indian conglomerates. The Congress party may make some noises, but in the ultimate analysis, both the BJP and the Congress align strongly with the US and global capital. People have no option other than to lump the structural challenges these centres will pose.Also read: Amid Protests by Locals, Foreign Funding For Data Centres in India DeclineA data centre no doubt generates considerable employment during its construction phase. Once it is operational, the scene changes drastically. It is, after all, almost a fully automated facility requiring a minuscule number of persons to operate. Its appetite for power and water is obscene.Almost all of the sophisticated equipment – microchips, servers, networking hardware, and other specialized systems – is imported. We provide only the basic needs. Our gain in the arena of high-value technology amounts to nothing. These facts are well known, and volumes have been written about them.Quo Bono?Who benefits? As always, it is not the ordinary people. The technology companies, data-centre operators, financiers, real-estate developers and major contractors are likely to reap handsome profits. Landowners and intermediaries make money at the time of land acquisition. But a youngster from a village a few paces away from the data centre will not gain much.Leave alone high-end prowess like designing AI chips, developing large language models or advanced computing software, he is not even likely to have the facility to acquire the necessary basic skills even to carry out routine maintenance and repair tasks at the centre.The fundamental questions are these: Will the Indian youth get to walk on the road to high technological literacy as a result of this bonanza offered to big business? Or will he be condemned to learn techniques and subjects that have long become obsolete?A data centre cannot provide the answer. It is just physical infrastructure. It provides raw computing capacity. It does not, on its own, generate semiconductor technology, advanced computing systems, AI models or software expertise. It will not automatically bestow technological capabilities on a local boy or a girl.Building digital infrastructure has nothing to do with developing genuine high-end technological capabilities. If we continue to import advanced hardware in exchange for cheap land and power, we will always remain miles away from becoming technologically sovereign.The bargain, as of now, is loaded in favour of big business. We are not in a position to change it substantially. Yet, there is some room to manoeuvre, which we can use to gain a foothold in the exciting world of technology. We must use it to extract firm commitments from the foreign investors and domestic players that will act as a reagent to discover whether our youth have it in them to march ahead on the road to high technology. Let me elaborate.The colossal capital involvedThe capital involved is gargantuan. It is a massive $300 billion by 2030. The players involved are the superstars of high technology and local giants. Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft are all investing. Foreign private equity funds, real estate investment trusts and international operators like NTT Data, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres and Digital Connexion (a joint venture involving Brookfield and Digital Realty) account for another slice of substantial investment.Domestic conglomerates, including AdaniConneX, Reliance Industries, Yotta Data Services (Hiranandani Group), CtrlS Datacenters and Sify Infinit Spaces, bring in significant additional capital through the construction of hyperscale industrial parks.Enter tier-2 universities, polytechnics and ITIsThat the tier-2 universities in India thrive on past glories is well known. The funds they receive are barely sufficient to pay the salaries of the teachers and employees and to keep the buildings from collapsing. Though education is a concurrent subject, these universities hardly receive anything substantial from the Union government.A recent report says that the students in the IITs, IIMs and NITs, who comprise just 3% of the student population in the higher education space, get 50% of all funding allocated for higher education. The remining 97% have to make do with the remaining 50%.Also read: Maharashtra’s Data Centre Race is Headed for a Flood-Driven Blackout. Its Mangroves Hold the ClueThe less said about the state of the polytechnics and the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), the better. The youth who serves me tea in our community dining hall is a diploma holder in air-conditioning. There is an urgent need to give these institutions a much-required resuscitation.The huge influx of capital in the arena of data centres offers governments, both the Union and in states, a wonderful opportunity to leverage this. India must change the rules of engagement. Access to public resources such as land, power and water must come with a clear commitment to build local human talent.Participating companies should be legally required to establish dedicated Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in tier-2 state universities, while explicitly excluding premier institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Premier institutes, in addition to receiving the lion’s share of government research grants, also get corporate sponsorships and global alumni funding.The establishment of research centres in regional state universities takes advanced technologies outside these exalted places and spreads them across the higher education spectrum. It acts as a boon to the faculty in these universities and allows talented students in smaller cities to learn advanced technology without having to leave their home regions.In addition, these companies should also give a firm commitment to establish or support two specialised polytechnics and four ITIs around the data centre.The need for private corporate funding in tier-2 state universities is also driven by a simple financial reality. The state governments are broke. With tight budgets and heavy spending on public welfare, state higher education departments simply do not have the funds needed to buy high-performance computer clusters, microchip design software, or advanced simulation tools, which typically cost Rs 15 crore to Rs 35 crore per installation.One-time grants have been a dismal failure. Within a few years, the equipment that has been purchased get rusty without maintenance, software expire without renewal, electricity bills and researcher salaries become a perennial headache. These centres need a steady flow of funds until they become self-sustaining.To make these centres work over a long period, the Union government and industry must share the ongoing costs. State governments must provide the required land for setting up these centres, polytechnics and ITIs. We must keep in mind that a 100-MW data centre project costs Rs 6,000 crore to Rs 9,000 crore to build. Compared to this, the expenses involved in keeping these institutions running are just a fleabite.Also read: The AI Thirst Trap: Surge in Data Centres Adding to ‘Global Water Bankruptcy’A major data centre is expected to make a net profit of more than 40%. Therefore, the participating companies must pay for 10 to 15 years of operating expenses – such as software updates and utility bills – and assign their senior engineers to teach as paid instructors, who will work along with the university faculty.The capital expenditure for the centre will be shared equally between the Union government and the participating companies. Centres of excellence (CoEs) are expected to become self-sufficient in 10 to 15 years. As regards the polytechnics and the ITIs, the teaching faculty, at least until the instructors within these institutions are fully trained, should be from the CoEs and the participating companies.The expense share will be the same as proposed for the CoEs. I don’t think this is new to companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, who have set up CoEs, specialised research labs and skills academies all around the world. However, their global approach has usually been to tie up with established elite institutions like the IITs or engage with local community colleges through basic Corporate Social Responsibility routes.This proposal is to persuade the participating companies to combine their high-end CoE model with their localised vocational academy model, and place their combined infrastructure where it is needed most – in India’s tier-2 state universities, polytechnics and ITIs.Unlike the regular computer science departments, these tier-2 university CoEs will focus on the complex fields required for true technological self-reliance. It is beyond my competence to suggest the fields in which the students will be trained and become experts.This training model must also extend to hands-on technical trades at the proposed regional polytechnics and ITIs. A modern data centre requires non-stop, 99.999% (“five-nines”) reliability. These specialised polytechnics and ITIs will not only train their students to lend support to data centres but also to learn extra skills to have a successful, high-value technical careers.The need for urgencyI am not an expert, but this proposal is not a theoretical abstraction. It originates from a conviction that has stayed with me for many years. Years ago, I took voluntary retirement from the government to become the CEO of a research foundation, which ran a sort of a CoE inside a tier-2 university.The funding was provided by an energetic NRI who had made it big in the US and who was interested in making his own alma mater an important centre of innovation in India. The CoE was headed by an idealist professor who had dedicated his entire life to it.Also read: How Foreign Players Drive India’s Gross Expenditure on R&DThe initial days were rosy. The state government was supportive and we could attract faculty with doctorates from prestigious universities. We thought we could create an island of excellence which would enthuse others to create similar islands. But we hit a brick wall when we found that there was a complete lack of support from the Union government and Indian industries.Scaling up and replicating it in other tier-2 universities was impossible and the research funding routes were completely frustrating. The effort eventually stalled. I withdrew early, but the professor soldiered on until recently.Today, the massive influx of capital for data centres offers us a rare, historic opening to breathe life back into our neglected tier-2 state universities. The private companies, when offered clear policy guidelines, are not likely to stand in the way of a model that will ensure that their own long-term talent pipeline will never go dry.But the impetus must come from us. It is now up to the academics, researchers and concerned citizens in our university towns to seize this moment, debate this idea openly, refine its details and persuade state governments and the Union government to act quickly.The window to demand something lasting in return for our land, power, and water is rapidly closing, and time is running out. I request The Wire to initiate this crucial discussion.P.A. Krishnan is an author in English and Tamil. With a postgraduate degree in physics from Presidency College, Madras and experience in academia, the civil service and scientific institutions, he writes frequently on science and public life.