India, June 14 -- The state government is pushing hard to become the country's digital nerve centre, revising its Integrated Data Centre Park Policy to vastly expand its scope and offer key players greater incentives.

But these economic ambitions will come at a price. Among the amendments to the 2024 policy, made earlier this week, is a massive dilution in the green power requirements for data centres, large complexes that house powerful computer systems used to train AI models.

The government has reduced the mandatory green power requirement for core data centre operations from 100% to 51% even as there is a pushback against data centres across the world for the massive amounts of electricity and water they consume.

Nevertheless, the ...