This is a very false premise. Water is no reason to not have a fab, just like Japan builds semiconductor & nuclear plants in a seismically active zone. So does Israel in a dessert.
India receives way more rain than it requires even in the drier parts, the problem with soil degradation and deforestation that came with unchecked "modern" agriculture.
The productivity & economic benefits from a FAB and semiconductor ecosystem in India will far outweigh any negative, putting a plant close to a nuclear plant and a massive desalination plant to ensure both power, water as well as security will do the job.
> The productivity & economic benefits from a FAB and semiconductor ecosystem in India will far outweigh any negative, putting a plant close to a nuclear plant and a massive desalination plant to ensure both power, water as well as security will do the job.
Diversion of water resources to fabs (they require around 2 million liters a day; Intel fabs consumed 9 billion gallons / 3.4 trillion liters in 2015) can gravely affect our food security as 60% of our cultivable land are in "drought prone" areas. Moreover, the water released from the fabs is toxic and can heavily pollute our environment even after they are treated and stringent standards are complied with (and expecting that is a joke in India).
Your suggestion of using a nuclear plant and a desalination plant might seem practical, but it ignores the fact that the byproduct of desalination plants are huge quantities of various salts. And dumping them causes pollution (if you dump them back in the sea, it can create dead zones for kms around as most aquatic life cannot survive in such a "salty" concentrated environment).
The run off from agriculture and tanners is several orders of magnitude greater.
If you factor the over all benefit to the pollution and resource consumption, a fab is several orders of magnitude better, why else would everyone else scramble to get one built.
A fab at the expense of food security is not a good deal. When you can't feed your people, you are at the mercy of other nations, and that greatly harms national security. India used to once have frequent famines, and had to beg food from other countries. Today it can feed its billion+ population because it is the world leader in producing fruits, vegetables, grains, diary produce etc. A starving population doesn't care about CPU chips.
India receives way more rain than it requires even in the drier parts, the problem with soil degradation and deforestation that came with unchecked "modern" agriculture.
The productivity & economic benefits from a FAB and semiconductor ecosystem in India will far outweigh any negative, putting a plant close to a nuclear plant and a massive desalination plant to ensure both power, water as well as security will do the job.