Cyclone Arnab made landfall a few hundred miles from some of India’s largest data-centre corridors, turning a familiar coastal emergency into a warning about the country’s digital future. The storm has once again tested India’s disaster machinery, but it has also highlighted a harder question — can the country protect not only people, but the power grids, transport links and digital infrastructure on which modern economic life depends?

The cyclone is the latest in a series of climate-driven disasters to hit India and wider South Asia. Floods, heatwaves, droughts, landslides and storms have caused billions of dollars in damage in recent years and claimed thousands of lives. In 2024 alone, extreme weather struck India on 322 of 366 days, according to an analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment.…