India, Feb. 23 -- India's rush toward AI data centres is usually told as a tidy technology story. Compute is running short, global demand for AI is surging, and India - with its land and talent -appears well placed to host the next wave of digital infrastructure. It is an easy story to believe, and a comforting one.

But pause for a moment and ask a different question: is India really making a technology choice here, or is it committing itself to something far more durable? Because once data centres arrive, they don't just run software - they redraw cities, reorder power grids, lock in public spending, and quietly shift where strategic control sits, long after the technology headlines have moved on. Across the world, AI has entered a new ...