00:00This is how Kanta Devi starts her day, carrying water home one bucket at a time.
00:07Her family of six lives in Jibinagar, right on the outskirts of Delhi.
00:11They have no running water and must manage with just six buckets a day.
00:17We use this water for everything, bathing, washing clothes, cooking and drinking.
00:22We use it to wash vegetables. Our cooking water is also our drinking water.
00:38We use it to wash water.
00:56It requires large amounts of water.
00:59When you pump a gigawatt of electricity into a data center, when it goes into the chips, that electricity gets
01:05turned into heat.
01:06And so you get a gigawatt of heat into that building and now you have to get it out of
01:10that building.
01:10So the way they get the heat out of these data centers is to evaporate water.
01:16Well, they literally use the phase change of the water, right, to evacuate the heat from these data centers.
01:24India is positioning itself as a data center hub.
01:27As of today, there are over 300 data centers across the country.
01:31According to estimates, they consumed around 150 billion liters of water in 2025.
01:38But reports say more than half of them are located in water-stressed regions.
01:44That's why Indian activists want data centers to disclose how much water they use.
01:49And they are asking decision makers to consider water supplies alongside land and electricity infrastructure before approving new facilities.
