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NAINA, Maharashtra’s upcoming smart city, can draw insights from China’s Guiyang and emerge as India’s science data capital
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With the first phase of the Navi Mumbai International Airport soon to become operational and the launch of a new mega-smart city, NAINA, the Government of Maharashtra is progressing rapidly. NAINA, an acronym for Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area, is being designed to assemble new-age industries. The core of NAINA’s development will be the massive data and data-allied industries. NAINA and its adjoining Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are currently estimated to cumulatively accommodate about 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of energy-clean information technology and data capacity, following the Maharashtra government’s new Green Integrated Data Centre Park Policy. The state is projected to attract investments to the tune of US$ 20 billion, which is nearly half of the investments coming to India. Furthermore, India’s data centre market is expected to reach almost US$ 14 billion by 2029.
NAINA and its adjoining Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are currently estimated to cumulatively accommodate about 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of energy-clean information technology and data capacity, following the Maharashtra government’s new Green Integrated Data Centre Park Policy.
The upcoming mega-scale and hyper-scale data centres in NAINA are expected to be designed as enormous repositories of commercially valuable generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) data, transactional data, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) big data. In addition, a gargantuan volume of digital public goods stacks data, industrial operations big data, financial data, and governance services data. However, a few particular questions arise: will NAINA fill the void in India’s scientific infrastructure? Will NAINA also house data created by India’s research and development (R&D) laboratories through an indigenous Bharat Science and Technology Cloud? There are lessons to learn from China’s Guiyang province.
Guiyang, until the early 2010s, was primarily known for being an agrarian region, with its per capita income lower than the coastal Chinese provinces. Guiyang’s geology is dense with mountainous caves, which is favourable for heat-generating data centres. The Chinese government quickly identified this attribute and anointed Guiyang as China’s ‘Big Data Valley.’ Today, Guiyang is home to over 4,000 data centres, including more than 20 large ‘hyper-scale’ data centres owned by TenCent, China Telecom, China Unicom, and Huawei. However, Guiyang is not merely a commercial data centre. It is also plugged into China’s scientific progress.
Guiyang’s unique geography was exploited to make it a global hub for astronomers since it began operating the world’s largest single-dish Five Hundred Meter Aperture Telescope (FAST). China’s FAST has the rare distinction of taking the baton of the world’s radio astronomy leader from the United States (US) since the latter decided not to resurrect the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which degraded and fully collapsed in 2022. While Puerto Rico never established data centres, data wasn’t considered a strategic priority at the height of its operations between the 1980s and 2000. China combined its astronomy prowess in Guiyang with cloud computing and data storage capabilities. Although American scientists attribute FAST as China’s soft-power beacon, the Chinese, in reality, want to make hard power gains out of it. Guiyang is a lesser-known strategic asset of China. It is home to the data storage facilities of the China Science and Technology Cloud, a holding company operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and under the State Council.
China’s FAST has the rare distinction of taking the baton of the world’s radio astronomy leader from the United States (US) since the latter decided not to resurrect the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which degraded and fully collapsed in 2022.
The China Science and Technology Cloud is a platform dedicated to over 100,000 Chinese scientists to store, retrieve, access, use, transact, deliver, and share all scientific information, data, and literature. Currently, the platform has a computing capacity of 315 petaflops, a storage capacity of 150 petabytes, a pool of 400-plus diverse research software, and more than 22 data platforms. These platforms include data centres dealing with astronomy, geoinformatics, high-energy physics, material sciences, space sciences, microbiome, genome, proteome, lipidome, earthquake sciences, polar (Arctic and Antarctic) data, Tibetan geological sciences, ecological sciences, marine sciences, meteorology, forestry and grasslands, agricultural sciences, health sciences, earth system sciences and Gobi Desert cryosphere sciences, among others.
India’s NAINA project has lessons to learn from China on many levels. First, NAINA can become a cloud storage hub for not only commercial, transactional and personal data but also for India’s scientific data. Two, although India has been a national member of the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA), it still needs to identify the significance of how China, a compatriot CODATA member, has benefited from the China Science and Technology Cloud. India should create a similar centralised platform for data storage emanating from the various public and private scientific laboratories it finances. Third, the Indian government should establish a public-sector enterprise to own the hardware for a ‘Bharat Science and Technology Data Cloud, ’ with NAINA as an advantageous hub to house it, given its emergence as India’s upcoming data capital.
An ANRF-operated data cloud is imperative as the R&D output generated by the scientific laboratories would need to be stored securely. Scientific data is India’s strategic ‘digital’ asset and precious intellectual property.
The Indian government, through its newly established Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), is creating a corpus of INR 50,000 crores for R&D funding in the country. The 2025-26 Union Budget has allocated INR 14,000 crores for this corpus, and the remaining INR 36,000 crores are expected to be raised from corporate and philanthropic sources. Additionally, ANRF is on the cusp of setting up an ambitious INR 100,000 crore fund through which R&D in the private sector will be financed through low-interest and long-term loans. The ANRF is committed to aligning with the goals of the “Viksit Bharat 2047” agenda and aims to consistently follow global best practices adopted by R&D agencies across the world. If this is the case, one of the first megaprojects it should initiate is to create a ‘Bharat Science and Technology Data Cloud’. An ANRF-operated data cloud is imperative as the R&D output generated by the scientific laboratories would need to be stored securely. Scientific data is India’s strategic ‘digital’ asset and precious intellectual property. Its residency and sovereignty should be of paramount importance. Making Maharashtra’s NAINA a science data capital for India is the way forward.
Chaitanya Giri is a Fellow at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
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Dr. Chaitanya Giri is a Fellow at ORF’s Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology. His work focuses on India’s space ecosystem and its interlinkages with ...
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