Government is considering to regulate Data Center business in the country

India is witnessing a transition, from an emerging to a developed market economy and digital is slated to play a key role in this journey. With over a billion mobile phones and more than 700 million internet subscribers, India has also witnessed an exponential growth in digital-commerce, digital entertainment and use of social media. India’s mobile data consumption is already the highest in the world and is constantly increasing. MeitY has drafted a Data Centre policy to benefit the developers as well as the allied ecosystem of the Data Centre sector.

The policy intends to ensure sustainable and trusted Data Centre capacity within the country. The size of the digital population in India and the growth trajectory of the digital economy necessitates a strong growth of Data Centres, which has the potential to fulfil the growing demands of the country. Need for Data Centre infrastructure within the boundaries of the country is further necessitated by the data localization provisions of the proposed Data Protection Act and for protection of the digital sovereignty of the country in an increasingly connected world.

India also offers advantages of having a favourable geographical location on the world map, availability of economic resources, established global connectivity through submarine cables, easy and cost-effective access power and readily available skilled manpower, enabling the nation to become a global Data Centre hub.

Businesses are consuming more data than ever before and this trend will only grow. But our tech-loving ways could cause lasting damage to the planet. As part of the policy framework, the Ministry is looking at reducing the number of clearances needed for setting up a data center. Accordingly, plans are on to discuss the matter with Central ministries and State governments for possible alignment on this subject.

Data centers need about 40 clearances, which takes a lot of time. Growth of data center creates lots of job opportunities for job seekers. At the same time, experts say that Data centers could cause serious environmental damage, if we don’t regulate them now. The concern is as the COP26 comes to a close, one of the biggest challenges international leaders have failed to address is setting tighter and clearer regulations for the exponentially growing cloud industry.

Many tech companies have publicly claimed to be ‘carbon neutral’, but the truth isn’t as clean cut. A lot of them just purchase Renewable Energy Certificates or RECs to offset emissions on paper and don’t provide proper transparency in their emission calculations. And that’s a big problem. Without clear, transparent, and universal reporting standards, we can’t know what percentage of green energy is being used to power data centers and what percentage comes from purchasing REC offsets.

Finally, we can’t repair the damage of the climate crisis, so it’s important that we instead focus on building data centers that are actually better for the environment.