300 Jobs per Gigawatt — Please Put It in Writing

The Hindu reports from Tarluvada, where Google and Adani are building a 1 GW AI data centre on 260 acres — 90% inside notified reserve forest, cleared in nine days with no impact assessment — and where the promised jobs were never written down. Using E.A.S. Sarma's estimate of 300 jobs per gigawatt against 7.9 GW proposed across three districts, the multiplication is done here in the open, followed by four asks: a jobs-per-gigawatt figure before clearance, a district skilling pipeline built on the National Employment Grid design, enforcement of the 2019 local-employment law, and water and heat counted as part of the cost.

A blue wall of corrugated sheets now lines the road into Tarluvada, a village of about 3,000 people in Anandapuram mandal, near Visakhapatnam. Behind it, on 260 acres, Google and the Adani Group are building a 1 GW AI data centre, part of a $15 billion plan.

The Hindu walked that road on 13 November 2026, and one line stopped me:

"When we asked about the jobs, the officials said that employment opportunities would be discussed after the project's completion in 2029. So far, nothing has been put in writing." — R. Kondamma, farmer, to The Hindu, 13 November 2026

Nothing in writing is the whole story. The Tarluvada and Rambilli projects applied for clearance on 9 April and got it on 18 April — nine days — as a B2 building construction project, the category used for an apartment block, with no impact assessment and no public hearing. Ninety per cent of the Tarluvada site sits inside notified reserve forest. The offer was ₹40 lakh an acre, 20 cents an acre returned, and a job for every household. The land went first. The number was never written down.

E.A.S. Sarma, former secretary to the Government of India, puts a data centre's employment at about 300 jobs per 1,000 MW, most of them requiring highly skilled people. So let us run the arithmetic out loud, from the same report of 13 November 2026:

• about 300 jobs per gigawatt of capacity (Sarma's estimate)
• 7.9 GW of data centres proposed across Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli and Vizianagaram (Human Rights Forum's V.S. Krishna)
• 7.9 × 300 ≈ 2,370 jobs for the entire regional pipeline
• about 3,000 people living in Tarluvada alone

The whole AI corridor therefore promises fewer jobs than the population of one village it displaces. Set today's other numbers beside it: Kia's $2 billion Anantapur plant, 12,000 direct and indirect jobs (News Adda, 13 November 2026); the Jewar tractor plant, 1,200 direct jobs (DD News, 13 November 2026). I am not against data centres; Visakhapatnam deserves to be an AI hub. I am against a press release that counts gigawatts and calls it employment.

Four things I would ask of the Andhra Pradesh government and the developers, before another acre is cleared:

1. File the number before clearance. Jobs per gigawatt — permanent, on-roll, with a local-hire split and a year-by-year schedule — submitted by the developer, published by the district, and penalised if missed. No number, no B2 nod.
2. Wire skilling to that number. My National Employment Grid whitepaper (July 2025) already sketches the machinery: a resume uploaded once, AI matching both sides every day, InterviewBots for first-round screening. Run a district edition through the local polytechnic and oblige the operator to hire from its cohorts.
3. Enforce the State law of 2019 mandating 75% local employment. It exists. Nobody audits it.
4. Price water and heat into the job. The city's demand is about 400 million litres a day against 326 million available, and data centres could lift local temperatures by 2°C to 2.5°C in a district that already touches 45°C. A job that arrives with a dry borewell is not a livelihood.

In September 2025, writing about Kutch's Future: Green Energy, Data, and the True Meaning of Development, I asked whether we are shifting resource consumption from fossil fuels to land and water for "green" infrastructure. Tarluvada answers that question. Development that cannot be counted in local lives is not development. It is a press release with a wall around it.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
13 Nov 2026