In the shadow of the cloud: Thane protests proposed hyperscale data centre

When the areas of Balkum, Majiwada and Dhokali in Thane first heard that Amazon was coming to their neighbourhood, they thought of jobs. For some, the land beside their homes, once occupied by a chemical company, had been lying vacant.

An Amazon facility sounded like an opportunity for a community that had already lost livelihoods when the factory shut. It was only later that residents learnt what was actually being built: a 53-acre hyperscale data centre expected to consume 422 MW of power, 125 kilolitres of treated water daily and have 193 diesel generators on standby.

That discovery has turned excitement into resistance. For villagers and residents of sprawling apartment complexes living next to the site, the question is no longer what Amazon might bring to Thane, but what the city may have to give up for it: water, power, quiet and, they fear, a little more room to breathe.

Sprawled across 53 acres, the Amazon Web Services facility is set to come up in Thane’s Balkum area, surrounded by highrises, small padas and at least eight schools and hospitals. AWS purchased the land from developer Kalpataru Buildings during the Covid period to establish the hyperscale facility.

“Earlier, this land housed a chemical company which employed the local villagers. After it was closed over health concerns, thousands had lost their source of income. So, when we first heard that there was an Amazon centre coming up, we were hoping it would create jobs,” said Rohidas Patil, a native farmer of Balkum whose home is next to the facility’s boundary wall.

“But last year, we found out that this was no ordinary facility, it was a hyperscale data centre,” he said. Residents subsequently began looking into data centres and the protests they have triggered elsewhere. The #WakeupThanekar movement took shape around a central question: how could a hyperscale facility be permitted in the middle of a city?

On July 18, hundreds of residents formed a human chain in a silent protest against the proposed centre. Shiv Sena MP Naresh Mhaske has also backed the residents. A bureaucrat from the MMR region said the Thane project differed from several other data centres in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, which have largely come up in existing industrial complexes such as the Airoli Mahape belt and Chandivali Powai.

“The one difference when it comes to Thane as against most data centres in MMR like Navi Mumbai and Mumbai is that data centres in these cities are slated to come up in already existing industrial complexes … and are hardly surrounded by any residential accommodation,” the bureaucrat said.

“The proposed data centre in Thane is near a residential area, which means extra precautions will have to be put in place,” the bureaucrat added. Water is one of the residents’ biggest concerns. Thane currently faces a shortage of 31 MLD of potable water every day, while the Thane Municipal Corporation has twice this year written to the BMC seeking additional supply.

According to public information furnished by Amazon, the facility will draw 125 kilolitres (KLD) water each day of 115 MLD supplied by the TMC for landscaping and irrigation. TMC officials said the proposed data centre would be supplied with treated water from sewage treatment plants at Kolshet and Majiwada.

“No potable water supply will be impeded as water from two separate STPs at Kolshet and Majiwada are proposed to cater to the data centre’s demands,” an official, on condition of anonymity, told The Indian Express. Responding to queries, Amazon spokesperson told The Indian Express, “We are committed to being a responsible neighbour in Thane and our environmental clearances are publicly available on the Indian Government portal.

Our data centre will not use water for cooling. We will use closed-loop cooling technology that recirculates coolant through sealed pipes without consuming water. It won’t draw power from the local network but will connect to the high-voltage transmission grid through its own dedicated industrial substation.

Amazon has been building and operating data centres responsibly for nearly two decades. We are continuously innovating the design and engineering, and we’re always focused on creating a positive impact in the community.” The assurance has done little to assuage residents’ concerns.

“People in Thane are already facing an immense water crisis and depend heavily on tankers as Thane barely has its own source of water supply. In such circumstances, the supply of any water to this data centre facility is bound to impact us directly,” said Dayanand Nene, a resident of Thane’s Saket complex who has spearheaded the protests.

The Thane controversy comes as Maharashtra aggressively positions itself as a major data centre destination. Last month, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that the state had signed MoUs worth more than $300 billion to develop data centres.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region is at the heart of this expansion. According to a July 2026 report by Rubix Data Sciences, the MMR accounts for 49 per cent of India’s operational data centre capacity.