India, July 4 -- Chennai has been the manufacturing capital of India for years now. Today it's vying to be the country's artificial intelligence (AI) and data centre capital. Chennai is seeing crores of rupees in investments in its digital infrastructure, from hyperscale cloud facilities to AI-ready campuses. With its large undersea cable access, existing IT ecosystem and affordable land, the city is banking on being the foundation of India's AI economy for global technology giants, colocation providers and infrastructure investors. This is seen in recent investments by operators like Sify and renewed interest from overseas investors. But underneath the promise of digital change is a growing environmental crisis.

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