HEAT ON COLD DRINKS

‘The Coca-Cola company exists to benefit and

refresh everyone it touches,” says the home
page of the world’s largest soft drink
company’s website. But many in India, and in
the 199 other countries that Coke is sold in, are
finding out the truth the hard way.
Coke has been in the news recently for all the
wrong reasons; the latest being the 5 August
report of the Centre for Science and
Environment, New Delhi. A CSE test found 12
soft-drink brands of Coke and its global rival
Pepsi contained pesticides and insecticides in
excess of the European Economic Commission’s
limit. The Parliament’s immediate reaction:
ban on the brands on its premises.
On 8 August, a West Bengal government report
said sludge and liquid effluents from Coke’s
plants at Dankuni, Taratala and Jalpaiguri and
Pepsi’s at Narendrapur contained toxic metals
and the carcinogen cadmium.
On 6 August, Kerala State Pollution Control
Board had confirmed that Coke’s bottling plant
had indeed been polluting the groundwater and
agricultural land in and around its Palakkad
plant.
Six months ago, CSE tests had found pesticides
in leading packaged water brands, including
those produced by Coke and Pepsi.
These bombshells followed media reports in the
UK and in India of the scorching and
environmentally disastrous impact of Coke’s
operations in several regions in India; of
allegedly rigging marketing tests in the USA and
using slush funds to boost equipment sales; of
reportedly hiring Right-wing death squads to
eliminate trade union organisers in Columbia
and Guatemala; of causing environmental
damage in Panama and of neglecting health
problems of its employees in Africa.
While reports of pesticides’ and insecticides’
presence in Coke and Pepsi may now deter
consumers from enjoying the soft-drinks,
people living in and around Coke’s bottling
plants in India have been feeling the heat in a
different way. In Kerala, Uttar Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, people
have been protesting against Coke’s bottling
plants because they’ve depleted groundwater
level and damaged the environment.
Villagers of Palakkad’s Plachimada village in
Kerala had been agitating against Coke’s
bottling plant for several months but their
plight drew global attention only recently after
BBC Radio 4’s Face The Facts expose. Presenter
John Waite visited Coke’s Plachimada plant
after villagers complained of falling
groundwater level in the area after Coke had
started drawing it in huge quantities. Waite
carried the samples of water and wastes sold
by Coke as soil conditioner (but used by local
farmers as fertiliser) back to the UK, where
laboratory tests showed that they contained
dangerous levels of cadmium. Tests at
University of Exeter too showed the material
was useless as a fertiliser and contained a
number of toxic metals, including lead. But the
company has been denying any wrongdoing.
Coke vice-president in India Sunil Gupta told
the BBC that the fertiliser didn’t pose any risk.
“We have scientific evidence to prove it is
absolutely safe and we have never had any
complaints.”
But Plachimada’s villagers have a different
story to tell. Three years ago, the little patch
of land in the green, picturesque rolling hills of
Palakkad yielded 50 sacks of rice and 1,500
coconuts a year. It provided work for dozens of
labourers. Then Coke arrived and built a 40-
acre bottling plant nearby. In his last harvest,
Shahul Hameed, owner of a small holding,
could manage only five sacks of rice and just
200 coconuts. His irrigation wells have run dry,
thanks to Coke drawing up to 1.5 million litres
of water daily through its deep wells to bottle
Coke, Fanta, Sprite and the drink the locals
call, without irony, ‘‘Thumbs-Up’’. But the
cruellest twist is that while the plant bottles a
mineral water, local people – who can never
afford it – are now being forced to walk up to
10 kilometre twice a day for a pot of drinking
water. The turbid, brackish water that remains
at the bottom of their wells contains too high a
level of dissolved salts to drink, cook with or
even wash in.The disruption in life because of
depletion of groundwater and contamination by
pollutants have forced villagers to picket the
factory for the past 470 odd days. Over 300
people have been held for demonstrating
against Coke and blackening its hoardings.
On 7 April, the Perumatty panchayat revoked
the factory’s licence to alleviate the villagers’
sufferings despite losing almost half of its
annual income of Rs 7,00,000. But Coke’s
lawyers got the suspension order revoked by
appealing to the local self-government
department. Coke could operate its plant till 6
August – but on that day KPCB made its report
public, confirming the existence of
carcinogenic contaminants in the waste. Now,
the government has postponed the hearing,
saying it’s “necessary to… (get) SPCB’s report”
confirmed.
This is actually a David and Goliath battle:
some of the world’s poorest people versus a
multinational giant. The Centre classifies many
of the suffering villagers as primitive tribals or
Dalits. Few took notice when the villagers first
began complaining of the changes in the
quantity and quality of well water. But their
complaints mounted, for they not only lost
their water but, with the dried-out farms
closing, also their jobs. A reasonable number of
crippled labourers would be 10,000.
Coke, of course, denies responsibility for all
this, and it has the support the local
authorities; they argue that the company
creates jobs. Politicians even threatened the
agitationists with “dire consequences” if they
didn’t stop. Though Coke claims to have carried
out the mandatory Environment Impact
Assessment report before setting up the plant,
none so far has seen the report. Waite’s
repeated requests to the company to produce a
copy of the report met with failure.
In UP, sustained protests against Coke have
prompted the Central Pollution Control Board
to initiate a probe into the pollution being
caused allegedly by Bharat Coca-Cola Bottling
North East Private Ltd – a bottling arm of Coke
– in Mehdiganj, 20 km from Varanasi. Trouble
started in early May when a court found the
firm guilty of not paying land revenue worth
more than Rs 15 lakh. An equal amount of
penalty – under Section 47 (A) of the Indian
Stamps Act – has also been imposed on the
company. The case, filed in April 2001 by the
UP government, was the outcome of lobbying
by protesting local residents. They allege the
plant has been discharging hazardous wastes
and heavy consumption of groundwater has
depleted the water level, from 15 feet to 40
feet. Result: severe drinking water scarcity.
In Maharashtra, villagers of Kudus in Thane
district now have to travel long distances in
search of water because it has dried up, thanks
to Coke. Villagers have began questioning the
subsidised water, land and tax breaks that Coke
gets from the state, only to leave them more
thirsty. A man was detained for protesting
against Coke’s pipeline, built to carry water
from a river to its plant.

In Tamil Nadu, more than 7,000 people

gathered in Sivaganga recently to protest
against a proposed Coke plant. Protests are
also building up against the sale of major
Cauvery tributary Bhavani by Tamil Nadu
government to Poonam Beverages for bottling
Coke’s packaged water, Kinley. Despite the
state facing drought conditions, the
government effected the sale. At places the
ground water level is beyond reach resulting in
water riots and even killings.
In Rajasthan, villagers of Kala Dera near Jaipur
have been protesting against the fall in the
groundwater level after a Coke plant started
drawing water. After the firm set up a bottling
plant, the area’s wells and ponds dried up.
‘‘The water level has fallen by more than 150
feet in the area…,’’ said a villager. Locals have
submitted a memorandum to the chief
minister, demanding the plant be shifted. But
the unfazed $-20-billion, Atlanta-based soft
drink giant claims “local communities have
welcomed our business as a good corporate
neighbour.” But this should not come as a
surprise, for Coke is accustomed to having its
way with
governments. Under the rules of entry into
India, Coke was to divest 49 per cent of its
equity stake within five years. But now the
government seems to have given in to the soft
drink giant’s pressure; it’s on the verge of
changing its policy to suit Coke’s interest. Will
Indian investors own 49 per cent of Coke’s
operations in India, but have no vote
whatsoever?

Remember Enron! In Coke’s case too, the US

government played a significant role. US
ambassador to India Robert Blackwill wrote to
Prime Minister’s principal secretary Brajesh
Mishra: “I would like to bring to your attention,
and seek your help in resolving, a potentially
serious investment problem of some
significance to both our countries. The case
involves Coca-Cola, one of the largest single
foreign investors in India.” But around the
world, Coke has increasingly become the target
of local communities’ ire around because of its
disregard for man and his environment. The
world’s most well recognised brand name’s
Latin American bottler is facing trial for
allegedly hiring Right-wing paramilitary forces
(death squads) to kill and intimidate trade
union organisers, especially from
SINALTRAINAL. The suit has been brought under
the Alien Tort Claims Act, that allows
corporations to be sued in the USA for crimes
committed overseas.
Holding Coke responsible for the harms it
causes is nothing new. In May 2003, Coca-Cola
de Panama was fined US $300,000 for polluting
Matasnillo river in that country.
Coke may not got the Enron way – for it is not
based on assumptions and speculation. But both
share some uncanny similarities: Enron and
Coke top the US foreign direct investment (FDI)
list in India. Enron’s Indian operations (Dabhol
Power Corporation, joint venture with Bechtel
and General Electric and others) was the
largest single FDI in India and became the
target of activists across the country because
of various irregularities. Enron was forced to
shut down its Indian operations long before the
financial scandal broke out in the USA and
brought the entire company down.
The company that started life in 1886 as the
result of a search for a headache remedy may
soon join Enron if it fails to stop giving people
more headaches than it can cure.

Discuss the environmental impacts.