While working on a strategy exercise to identify growth levers for a state government, I reached a surprising conclusion: data centres could be a primary engine for 10x growth.
While I know I am pro-sustainability, I am equally pro-growth. I particularly dislike open skylines being replaced by the view of tall buildings with big windows or advertisements. While I agree India needs infrastructure like hyperscalers and colocation to drive the growth it so excitedly aspires for, I am also advocating an integrated policy to ensure the growth is aligned with urban sustainability.
All this thought brought me back to the question – why is everyone, all of us, chasing growth? Not just for-profit companies, but governments, non-profit organizations, and also individuals like me… including me. We are all chasing growth.
But why?
What does growth even mean? For a start-up, it means more revenue, scale, more customers. For a country, what does growth mean? I know it’s GDP growth – more or less. But is that it?
A year back, when I was asking a similar – or an adjacent – question: is GDP growth the only metric a country should be chasing? I came across a book: Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance by Joseph Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand, OECD Publishing, 2018. They argue that a useful measure of progress needs to answer three things GDP cannot: who is actually benefitting from growth, whether that growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people genuinely feel about their lives.
GDP is insufficient on its own. Instead, progress should be measured through a nuanced combination of metrics tailored to a country’s specific developmental phase.
So, while the current Prime Minister of the country envisions India as a developed nation by 2047, I hope his team understands that what he means by growth is – water access for all, electricity access for all, the privilege to fail and faith in the system.
References
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Tripathi, V., Bagui, D., Aggarwal, P., Hulshof, P., Chopra, A., Jain, D., & Vashishtha, A. (2026). Scaling India’s Data Centre Ecosystem: Stakeholder Perspectives on Infrastructure, Energy, and Resilience. CEEW & SYSTEMIQ. ceew.in
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Stiglitz, J., Fitoussi, J., & Durand, M. (2018). Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance. OECD Publishing. doi.org/10.1787/9789264307292-en
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Kamath, N. (2025, January 9). People with the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi [Podcast episode]. People by WTF. Spotify