New Delhi, Sept. 16 -- India's draft data centre policy proposes a 20-year tax holiday for the sector. Whether this would be worthwhile, given that fiscal resources are always scarce, demands a close look.

Rather than subsidize an industry that is booming worldwide, policy could act as an enabler in areas that range from the low-cost supply of uninterrupted power to the training of people.

Data centres are hardware sites needed for shifting data and software services to the digital cloud in general and for the development and running of artificial intelligence (AI) in particular.

Developing AI is vital to India in a way it is not to many other countries, given the impact AI will have on information technology (IT) and IT-enabled servic...