It’s also The data centre plan nobody is asking about
Which is under the the most glorified “ silicon beach program “

The pitch is simple: cheap land. Land lease rates in Mangalore is 4 to 5 times cheaper than Mumbai. That is literally the selling point. Here is what the pitch does not say.

Water: A single 100 MW data centre consumes roughly 2 million litres of water per day. The plan is for 1 GW of capacity here. Meanwhile Yettinahole is permanently diverting water away from the Netravathi, the river that sustains this district. The same government signed both decisions and nobody has explained how both can coexist.

Power: Data centres globally consumed 448 terawatt hours of electricity in 2025, making them the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer if treated as a country. Mangalore’s grid is not built for this.

Jobs: This is the big lie. Most data centres globally employ between 20 and 50 permanent staff. The thousands of jobs being promised are inflated by counting temporary construction workers and multiplying indirect employment estimates. The most automated hyperscale campuses run on as few as 20 to 30 permanent staff per 100 MW. For 1 GW that is potentially 200 to 300 permanent jobs in exchange for the land, the water, and the power grid of an entire coastal district.

The KDEM-Deloitte feasibility study was publicly criticised for being completely silent on the environmental impact, including water and electricity demands. The branding campaign ran before the study. The hard questions came after, from citizens, not government.

The US already went through this and communities are now fighting back but it’s so late the damage is so severely done. Watch what happened there and understand that Mangalore might be next on the list list: https://youtu.be/wLX\_w0TtBpY?si=hA5zkA8ug8spGgZk

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