“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.”
- Microsoft is building a data center in Mekaguda, a village in the southern Indian state of Telangana, which is expected to start operations by 2025. About 70% of the construction has been completed.
- Last month, the state government intervened after Microsoft cited problems with the local village council.
- A group of local residents has filed a petition against Microsoft, claiming encroachment and the dumping of industrial waste in a nearby body of water. The court hearing for the petition is pending.
Addition: Why are E-Waste Strategies in Need for Sustainable Data Centers?
E-waste in data centers encompasses a wide array of discarded IT equipment such as servers, power distribution units, and other electronic components that are no longer in use. Despite the rapid pace of technological upgrades, the alarming statistic from the UN forecasts that e-waste volumes could reach 74.7 metric tons globally by 2030.
Not that I doubt the locals or anything - and like, fuck Microsoft - but what kind of industrial waste would a data center have?
From the article, it sounds like the facility is still under construction, so I imagine there might be construction waste, but that’s not really my field and I don’t know what that looks like. Runoff cement?
So construction waste is a subcategory of industrial waste. Typical industrial waste includes toxic materials like excess cement, fiberglass, bits of plastic from wires and cables. But once the data center is in place, most likely the waste will be e-waste in nature. Think heavy metals, copper, and yet more plastic. And the thing is… This is why they’re putting this data center here. Disposing of this toxic waste will be cheaper because it’s less regulated. The long term cost of high tech industries like this to neo-colonialized communities like this is the communities themselves. It doesn’t matter to Microsoft they’re making the water undrinkable. They don’t have to live there.
And realize, too. Bill Gates’ philanthropic missions aren’t accidents. He may not run the show at Microsoft anymore but he still benefits greatly from their business. His philanthropic efforts aren’t about making the lives of people who are exploited better. They’re about maintaining that cheap form of labor just a little bit longer. And that may not be Bill Gates’ actual intention, but the fact of the matter is he’s a billionaire. He could make much larger changes in the world by not being a billionaire. He has power and influence to do things the rest of us can’t, but instead of treating the illness he treats the symptoms. His actions sustain the system he benefits from
I don’t think Microsoft owns a construction company. Surely the shady construction company is to blame in that case? It’s not like Microsoft told them 4k dump their construction waste.
Also, Bill Gates isn’t head of Microsoft anymore, and hasn’t been for years now, maybe even decades at this point. The obsession with Gates doesn’t make much sense when there have been way worse people who have replaced him over the years.
Microsoft is still who vetted and hired the contractor and who selected the location.
And yeah. Past CEOs of Microsoft have continued to be shitty. They’re who’s responsible for what’s going on. I just wanted to talk about the ways white knight philanthropy doesn’t help, it just perpetuates colonialism, and Bill Gates+Microsoft have always been in lock step in this regard.
The point is the true villain here is colonialism
When you get and hire a plumber, do you check their criminal history? It’s ridiculous to expect Microsoft to act like the police or government to choose who does and doesn’t comply with laws. They’re not going to hire private investigators to check for crimes, that’s not their job.
Microsoft did pick the location, and as far as I can read, the permits have been signed. Attempts to block construction didn’t pass court, implying that either the local council doesn’t decide over what gets built there or the paperwork is in place.
it just perpetuates colonialism, and Bill Gates+Microsoft have always been in lock step in this regard.
You’re right, Bill Gates is spending billions on fighting malaria because deep in his heart he wants to bring the Congo back under white control. Lmao. Rich people giving away money for tax and image purposes is mostly just that, with a bit of a “I’m helping the world” mindset attached to it. As long as we acknowledge that, I can only see net positives in the charity work. This isn’t the “let’s dump a bunch of money near corrupt warlords” or “let’s kill the local fabric industry by sending our old clothes to a poor country” charity, this is R&D and free mass produced measures, available for cheap in any western country but unaffordable for poor nations, that could never have been produced locally.
The point is the true villain here is colonialism
Ridiculous. India is no longer a colony and even before that it wasn’t an American colony. Making Microsoft responsible for Indian politics, environmental agencies, and law enforcement is literally pulling the power away from the people and placing it with a foreign corporation. Microsoft taking on governmental responsibilities is the closest thing to colonialism they can possibly pull.
India should show that they don’t need a colonial power to instruct them how to control their country and figure this shit out, from local councils to the national government. Infantilisation of ex-colonies is part of the colonial mindset.
Microsoft pulled the same shit here. They lobbied at the national and provincial government, the locals protested but lost, they tried to block construction through environmental concerns (some kind of rare bird or beetle I believe), and this all failed. The reason? The previous elected local and provincial council agreed and signed all the paperwork before people found out what was happening. Does this mean Bill Gates is trying to colonise the Netherlands? No, this just means our politicians are corrupt and the legal instruments to protect the people are lacking. If it weren’t Microsoft, it could’ve been a supermarket distribution center, or a greenhouse, or anything else. The problem is systemic and the solution lies within the political system, not by being angry at the first company that figures out there’s some affordable land somewhere.
Maybe a local construction company dumping stuff?
Maybe the construction requires the clearing out of old buildings/material and they are not properly disposing of the old materials? I can totally see a shitty contractor doing this. Still Microsoft’s responsibility.
What industrial waste? Hot air?
Try reading the article. The factory hasn’t opened yet. They’re dumping the waste from construction in a lake.
I’m thinking of a “used” chilled water after flushing the pipe system?
Unused, expired diesel fuel (wtf)?Old shredded hard drives are also produced by data centers? But I guess these locals want to see some profit from their neighboring data center.
Shredded SSDs? It’s a ceramic dust.
By ceramic dust you mean it is not poisonous? Or are some rare earth materials / heavy metals in there that poison drinking water?
They’re it going to be dumping servers in the river. They’ll get moved to whatever recycling infrastructure is nearest, or maybe resold on the second hand market. From what the article says, the local economy and farming industry has been in decline since long before Microsoft bought land for a data center. A picture of a stack of pipes, with no verification that they’re even hooked up, aren’t exactly proof of anything either.
It seems to me that this isn’t about Microsoft or data centers, but about the local government versus the wider government. The locals don’t want a data center but the government above their local representation doesn’t care, and has the power to give out permits for this kind of stuff.
I’m sure there’s illegal waste dumping by the construction companies as locals say (which heavy fines or even prison sentences should be handed to), but data centers aren’t exactly chemical plants. There are many other downsides to data centers (such as fresh water consumption during hot summers, which India has plenty of, orthe impact on the local power grid) but as far as I can tell this is a political disagreement/power imbalance spun into an environmentalist story against a Big Bad Foreign Company to gain sympathy.
