From Disclosure to Due Diligence: Reimagining Corporate Freshwater Governance in India’s Digital Infrastructure Era

The rapid development of India’s digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence sector has significantly elevated the economic prominence of data centres, while concurrently highlighting the substantial volume of freshwater resources required for ongoing thermal management. This article examines the structural relationship between India’s prevailing corporate environmental framework and freshwater resource management, analysing how the current legal architecture, principally the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting mandates, operates to separate disclosure compliance from actual resource conservation. By focusing primarily on effluent discharge quality and internal operational efficiencies rather than cumulative extraction volumes, existing mechanisms permit enterprises to maintain favourable sustainability ratings while drawing heavily from constrained hydrological basins. Utilising Roscoe Pound’s sociological jurisprudence framework alongside comparative insights from the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, this paper evaluates the systemic limitations of transparency-based regulation. The analysis suggests that bridging this statutory gap requires shifting the legal standard from passive reporting to active environmental risk assessment and proactive mitigation. Finally, the article proposes targeted legislative adjustments under the Companies Act 2013, alongside enhanced institutional coordination, to integrate ecological accountability directly into the fiduciary duties of corporate boards. This structural realignment ensures that national digital economic expansion proceeds in harmony with long-term hydrological security, balancing technological advancement with essential public trust obligations.