Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Gujarat has a new plan to become India’s biggest home for data centres. On July 9, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel launched the Viksit Gujarat Data Centre Policy 2026-29. The government says this will bring in about Rs 6 lakh crore of investment and build 7.5 gigawatts (GW) of data-centre capacity—most of it in Dholera, a new city being built near the Gulf of Khambhat.
A data centre can be imagined as a giant building full of computers that store and handle the world’s data—every email, video, photo and AI chat lives inside.
“The Viksit Gujarat Data Centre Policy 2026-29 will make Gujarat the best destination in India for setting up data centres,” Patel said. “It will strengthen cloud services, artificial intelligence, ecommerce, digital governance and smart manufacturing.”
Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi said Dholera “is moving forward as the world’s largest data centre city”. Dholera is building wide roads, underground pipes and a big solar park. A semiconductor factory is under construction by Tata. The Dholera international airport, with two runways, is expected to start partial operations this year. About 5 per cent of the total 920 sq km area of Dholera Smart City is currently under development as an ‘activation area’. Six other companies have been allotted land in the ‘activation area’, and there is scope for several more.
But data centres don’t create many jobs. Building one employs thousands of workers for a while. Once it’s running, though, a huge hall of machines may need only a few hundred people at best. States don’t earn much in direct wages either. They hope to gain in other ways, such as land deals, selling electricity, taxes from the businesses that grow around them, and the pride of hosting global giants like, say, Google or Amazon.
Water guzzler
Data-centre computers run very hot and must be cooled, often with water, and a lot of it. They also consume electricity like a small city. Gujarat says it is “power-surplus” and will use seawater, not farmers’ water, for cooling. But desalination plants—the machines that turn seawater into fresh water—are costly. Around the world, the biggest headache for data centres isn’t money. It’s getting enough power and water ready on time.
The state’s drinking, irrigation and industrial water supply needs are largely met by the Narmada water and groundwater—but barely.
Diverting significant water for new-age industries would require the state to set up new sources of water, which would most likely be desalination plants. In Dholera, a desalination capacity of 20 million litres a day (MLD) is active, which suffices the current needs of the ‘activation area’.
