Data Centers Find Friendlier Ground in India, Survey Finds
Indians appear more open to AI infrastructure than Americans or Europeans, but power, water and land pressures may test that support
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India appears to have an early public-opinion advantage in the global race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure, with support for more data centers far higher than in the US and Europe, according to a global poll by Public First reported by the Financial Times.
About 65% of Indians supported increased construction of data centers, second only to Nigeria among 15 large economies surveyed, the FT reported.
In the US, home to many of the world’s largest AI companies, support stood at 26%, while backing in the UK, Germany and France was around 30%.
The findings come as resistance to data center construction grows in the US, where local opposition has delayed or blocked projects amid concerns over electricity demand, water use, land pressure, noise and higher utility bills.
Dozens of US data center projects worth at least $156 billion have been blocked or stalled since 2025, according to Data Center Watch figures cited by the FT.
For India, the poll points to a more favorable starting position, but not necessarily an easier buildout.
New Delhi is trying to expand domestic AI compute capacity at a time when data-center demand is rising sharply because of cloud adoption, digitization and AI workloads.
India’s data center capacity rose from about 375 MW in 2020 to around 1,500 MW by 2025, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told Parliament in March.
The government also said 38,231 GPUs had been onboarded through 14 empaneled service providers and data centers under its AI compute framework.
Private investment is gathering pace. CBRE said India’s operational data center stock reached about 1,530 MW in the first nine months of 2025, equal to 23 million square feet, with Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru accounting for nearly 90% of existing capacity.
A February white paper by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water said India’s installed data center capacity had nearly tripled from about 520 MW in 2020 to almost 1.5 GW by mid-2025, and could reach 4.5 GW to 6.5 GW by 2030.
Committed investments reached about $95 billion between 2019 and 2025 and are expected to exceed $100 billion by 2027, the paper said.
Large global technology companies are also expanding their India footprint.
Google said in October it would invest $15 billion over five years to build an AI data center in Andhra Pradesh.
The Visakhapatnam campus will have an initial capacity of 1 GW and will be Google’s largest AI hub outside the US.
Yet the economics and politics of data centers may become harder as projects move from announcement to execution.
Data centers require large and reliable power supply, cooling systems, land, fiber connectivity and transmission infrastructure.
The government has said data center electricity demand is estimated to reach 13.56 GW by 2031–32 and that those requirements are being factored into power planning.
Power demand is one area where pressure could intensify.
S&P Global Commodity Insights has estimated that data centers’ share of India’s electricity demand could more than triple to about 2.6% in 2030 from 0.8% in 2024.
Demand from data centers is expected to grow at 28% annually, far faster than India’s overall power demand growth of 5.3%.
Water use may become another source of scrutiny, particularly in urban and industrial clusters where several data centers are planned.
The Public First poll suggests India has a stronger social license for AI infrastructure than several advanced economies. But that support is still broad and national.
Resistance, if it emerges, is likely to be local and tied to specific concerns over land, electricity tariffs, water use and environmental clearance.
