Bulldozers arrived on the hillside above Tarluvada before most residents had ever heard the word "datacentre." Within months, the trees were gone, the red earth was levelled, and government officials were describing a $15 billion Google AI campus — the company's largest hyperscale facility outside the United States — as a "golden opportunity" for one of south India's poorest villages. The promises were large: scarce jobs would multiply, land values would rise, and compensation would be generous. Few locals were persuaded for long.

Opposition has since spread across Andhra Pradesh, echoing protests that have broken out from California and Texas to Scotland and Australia wherever AI infrastructure has collided with existing communities. Critics in the state accuse the government, which is aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, of deliberately obscuring the true scale of the project in order to push it through before more rigorous environmental assessments could be triggered. The facility was publicly announced as requiring 1 gigawatt of power — already an exceptional demand by global standards — yet campaigners allege the actual footprint is considerably larger. Google has partnered with the Adani Group, a conglomerate with significant political connections and a reputation for obtaining regulatory approvals rapidly, to develop the site.

For village head BRB Naidu, the uncertainty has become unbearable. He said he remained torn between the possibility of genuine prosperity and the fear of irreversible damage to the land and water that the community depends on. The state government, he added, had refused to answer residents' most basic questions about water consumption, emissions, and displacement.