New Silk Roads - Kshitija Mruthyunjaya - Lost Correspondence: From Tank Systems to Server Farms

Lost Correspondence: From Tank Systems to Server Farms

Kshitija Mruthyunjaya

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Bagmane World Technology Center. Photo: Kshitija Mruthyunjaya.

New Silk Roads
June 2025










Notes
1

Tim Ingold, interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, September 18, 2024.

2

Pinky Chandran and Nalini Shekar, “A Historical Lens on Bengaluru's Drains,” Citizen Matters, December 1, 2022, ; “The Bangalore Lake Diaries,” UNESCO MGIEP, accessed April 15, 2025, ; Suparna Kar, “Locating Bengaluru as India's Silicon Valley,” Artha - Journal of Social Sciences 15, no. 2 (April 2016): 49, . Bengaluru's transformation into a major urban center was shaped by centuries of progressive governance, beginning with Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan who established the city's foundational green infrastructure through Lalbagh Botanical Garden, earning it the "Garden City" designation. This tradition of forward-thinking leadership continued under the Wodeyars and subsequent administrators who prioritized both industrialization and educational development. The nineteenth-century Mysore state elites particularly embraced industrialization as synonymous with progress, implementing ambitious infrastructure projects including hydroelectric power generation, advanced irrigation systems, and major industrial establishments like the Bhadravati Iron Works, thereby laying the groundwork for Bengaluru's colonial interventions.

3

Kar, “Locating Bengaluru as India's Silicon Valley,” 49.

4

Kar, “Locating Bengaluru as India's Silicon Valley,” 49.

5

Vinay Gidwani et al., eds., Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024).

6

“Digital India,” Digital India Corporation, accessed May 15, 2025, .

7

Subhayan Chakraborty, “PM Modi calls upon top tech CEOs to be part of India's growth story,” Business Standard, September 23, 2024, .

8

Ananth Krishna S, “Why MeitY Will Be An Important Ministry In Modi 3.0,” Swarajya, July 1, 2024, .

9

“Digital India Initiatives,” Digital India, accessed April 15, 2025, . Other major Digital India initiatives not mentioned include BharatNet (National Optical Fiber Network); DigiLocker; UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance); MyGov platform; Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT); Common Service Centers; e-Courts; National Scholarship Portal; and various sectoral portals for Startup India, Make in India, and Skill India.

10

Vipul Kumar, “Beyond metros: How India's Tier II and Tier III cities are reshaping the data center landscape,” Data Center Dynamics, April 1, 2025, .

11

“Data Centre Policy: Draft for Discussion No. xxx/YY/2020,” Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (e-Governance Division), 2020, ,

12

“Data Centre,” ICRIER Prosus Centre for Internet and Digital Economy (IPCIDE), accessed June 4, 2025, .

13

Kumar Utkarsh, “How Bengaluru Became A Hub For Digital Nomads And Remote Workers,” India.com, May 16, 2025, .

14

“Bangalore Population,” World Population Review, accessed April 15, 2025, .

15

Anushree Pratap, “India's Data Centre Capacity May Reach 2GW by 2026,” Deccan Herald, January 25, 2025, . “India's Data Centre Market Booms: Savills India Reports 21% CAGR by 2030,” CIO Economic Times, January 25, 2025, .

16

Malini Ranganathan, “Storm Drains as Assemblages: The Political Ecology of Flood Risk in Post-Colonial Bangalore,” Antipode 47, no. 5 (April 2015): 1300–1320.

17

Rashmi Kulranjan et al., “How Water Flows Through Bengaluru: Urban Water Balance Report,” Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs at Institute for Financial Management and Research, .

18

R. K. Srinivasan, “Rise and Fall of Water Managers,” Down to Earth, November 29, 2024, .

19

Ranganathan, “Storm Drains as Assemblages.”

20

Ranganathan, “Storm Drains as Assemblages.”

21

Kulranjan et al., “How Water Flows Through Bengaluru.” Through four stages of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme (CWSS), water has been conveyed from the river to the TK Halli (Thorekadanahalli) Water Treatment Plant (WTP) and pumped up through Harohalli and Tataguni pump stations, before it reaches the city at a point named Vajarahalli, near Banashankari 6th stage. The water is distributed to the BBMP areas from here to fifty-six Ground Level Reservoirs (GLRs), from where it is then distributed across the city and surrounding areas. See “Here's how Cauvery water reaches homes in Bengaluru,” The New Indian Express, November 7, 2016, .

22

Kulranjan et al., “How Water Flows Through Bengaluru.”

23

Harshitha Padmavinod, “Promise of Cauvery Stage V: Will Bengaluru's Lifeline Overcome Hurdles to Quench City's Thirst?” Citizen Matters, April 7, 2025, .

24

Apoorva R et al., “Commercial, Industrial & Institutional Water Use in Bengaluru,” Environment and Development Discussion Paper No. 4., Bengaluru: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, 2021, .

25

Kulranjan et al., “How Water Flows Through Bengaluru.”

26

Others include Ramanagar, Magadi and Channapatna. “Water to Flow into Parched Bluru from Adjoining Towns via Tankers,” I Am Bengaluru, accessed May 26, 2025, ; “Bengaluru's Whitefield Continues to Face Water Woes,” Deccan Herald, accessed May 26, 2025, .

27

Shobha Rao, interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, April 15, 2025.

28

Gangadharan B, “Compulsory Cauvery connections won't solve Bengaluru water crisis: Citizens, experts,” Citizen Matters, February 27, 2025, .

29

Bengaluru hosts numerous colocation data centers, cloud providers, and network fabrics, establishing it as a significant data center market in India. “Bangalore Data Centers,” Data Center Map, accessed 23 April 2025, .

30

“Aadhaar Safety: Where is UIDAI's 13-Feet High, 5-Feet Thick Wall?” Business Today, March 23, 2018, .

31

"Aadhaar Safety," Business Today.

32

Aditya Kaul, interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, April 15, 2025.

33

M.G. Kodandaram, “Security Concerns in Goods Services Tax Network (GSTN),” Rostrum's Law Review 6, no. 1 (2021): .

34

Gunjan Jena, “The Hidden Environmental Costs of India's Data Centre Push,” The Wire Science, May 14, 2022, .

35

Vishwanath S., interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

36

“How vanishing lakes and parks are making Bengaluru heat stressed? | Urban Heatscapes E2,” posted May 29, 2025, by Down to Earth, YouTube, .

37

“Data Center Cooling - how are data centre cooled cold aisle containment hvacr” posted November 22, 2021, by The Engineering Mindset, YouTube, .

38

Swapnil Shrivastav, interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

39

Shyam Nandan Upadhyay, interview by Kshitija Mruthyunjaya, April 11, 2025.

40

Shrivastav, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

41

Shrivastav, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

42

Shrivastav, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

43

Kaul, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 15, 2025; Shrivastav, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 21, 2025.

44

Kaul, interview by Mruthyunjaya, April 15, 2025.

45

Aashish Aryan, “Govt May Revive Old Data Centre Policy with AI and ML Sops," The Economic Times, August 28, 2024, .

46

Jena, “Hidden Environmental Costs of India's Data Centre Push.”

47

Ingold, interview by Mruthyunjaya, September 18, 2024.