What has come to
light in the Coke and Pepsi sale of poisonous material is only the tip of the
iceberg of the ways of TNC’s operations in the country. Not only should the top
officials of the companies be publicly tried and punished for the harm done to
millions of people in the country, their accomplices in the corridors of power
should be publicly flogged. These imperialist mafia, with their colonial
mentality, consider Indians as lesser beings, that is why they consciously avoid
expenditures on the purification of the water in this country while maintaining
high standards in their own. No wonder their profits here are ten-fold compared
to what they earn in America (which is siphoned abroad through illegal means of
over/under-invoicing).
Imagine the extent of
the damage already caused to the Indian populace. According to the findings of
the CSE (Centre for Science and Environment) 12 soft drink brands of these two
companies (that monopolise 90% of the soft drink market), contain pesticide
residues varying from 37 times than permitted by the EEC (European Commission)
to as much as 76 times. These chemicals can cause brain damage, liver
problems, congenital birth defects, and hepatic and reproductive organ damage.
Doctors say, with prolonged use some damage is inevitable.
The arrogance of
these two foreign companies knows no bounds. Instead of apologizing to the
people of our country and promising to increase expenditure on safety standards,
they have resorted to threats and bribes to suppress the findings. First they
threw accusations that the CSE is not competent to do these tests and only their
own imperialist laboratories (one Dutch one) is equipped to do it. This, even
though the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) had validated the testing methods of
the CSE. Not only that, panic-stricken by the truth, they have filed a writ in
the High Court to restrict the CSE from publishing its report. If their view is
true, why then are they so afraid of the full report from being published?
Finally the bosses of Coke & Pepsi have even gone so far as to have met with the
US embassy to bring political pressure of the American government on the
political clan. Immediately, the embassy issued a threat, that there must be a "level
playing-field for foreign companies".
What level-playing
field are they talking about when the servile Indian establishment have given
these foreign companies all the benefits and have not even put any health norms
for these companies to follow? Even now, instead of acting on the CSE report,
which has been accepted by their own BIS, in order to stall for time and diffuse
people’s anger, they have said they will do an independent analysis. Most State
governments have also said they will do the same. Finally, unless the people in
the country rise up, the findings will get buried as happened with the mineral
bottled water issue. Coke and Pepsi will continue robbing our country and
poisoning its people — the bureaucrats and politicians will collect their
commissions. Even the great demagogue CPM General Secretary, Harkishan Singh
Surjeet, has gone on record saying he has nothing against these soft drink
companies operating in this country. Even on this occassion the CPM
parliamentary boss, Somnath Chatterjee, came to the defence of the Cola giants,
chiding his own MPs for putting "irresponsible demands" based on the
"questionable findings of some organi-sations."
After all it was
during CPM rule in Kerala that permission was given for the setting up of the
notorious Coca Cola plant in the tribal area at Plachimada, which has seen huge
agitations of the local people. (See Box) Both CPM and now Congress governments
have backed the Company to the hilt, sacrificing the lives of the affected
50,000 people in the neighbourhood. The Company’s role here is worse than even
the most despicable of bandits.
The Kerala Example
Though the Plachimada
Panchayat gave the plant permission to dig only one tube well the Coca Cola went
ahead and dug six. Consequently, within just six months of the plant coming up,
the 250 odd borewells in Plachimada went dry. Worse, the water in many of them
has turned brackish and putrid — unfit for drinking. Tribals even complained of
itching and stomach-ache after using the water. Even after consistent agitations
and the Panchayat canceling the license of the plant the government refuses to
act. In fact the Kerala Pollution Control Board and the Kerala State
Ground Water Department has given the company a green chit!!
Coca Cola is one of the sponsors of
the World Summit on Sustainable Development - Global Peoples Forum. We can
understand the nature UN Summit which is organised with an intention to save
the Earth from environmental disaster and pave the way for sustainable
development, when the culprits who destroy the livelihood resources of the
marginalized people axing their sustainable development, themselves like Coke
and other MNCs are the sponsors
But this is not all
about the criminal ways of this Coke plant. They have been selling/dumping their
waste sludge to farmers in the neighbourhood as ‘fertiliser’. Now, here too, it
was the BBC, in a programme that exposed that this sludge, besides having zero
fertilizer value, has a high level of cadmium — which causes cancer and damage
to the human nervous system. Thousands of tones of this waste material were
off-loaded in the fields of this region over the last three years. The findings
of the BBC have now been confirmed by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board,
which, till then, had been in a state of blissful slumber. It has been found
that one kg. of sludge contained 201.8 mg of cadmium; a solid is classified as
"hazardous" when it contains over 50 mg of cadmium!! So, the waste contained
4-times the hazardous limit!!!
Due to this Coke
plant, not only has the ground water level been depleted, the fertile land been
destroyed by its sludge, but peoples’ health been severely affected by the
cadmium. Now what could be more criminal than this? On top of this the
management of Coca Cola keeps denying the accusations, taking decisions to the
courts, while the Kerala government is silent. A prosperous fertile land and
people are being ruined due to one TNC plant!
But this is not all
about the operations of the Coca Cola in the country. They have a notorious
reputation for its mafia and goonda ways, again backed by the governments at
both the State and center.
Guntur Poison
In Oct 2001 the
Guntur Municipal Corporation (GMC) commissioner issued a notice to Sal Sales
Depot — Coca-Cola’s Guntur distributor — charging them with distribution of
contaminated beverages in 200 ml Thums Up bottles. He seized all stocks at its
godown and barred Coca-Cola from selling Thums Up in 200 ml bottles within the
Guntur municipal area to prevent an outbreak of an epidemic. The notice also
banned all 200 ml Thums Up bottles filled at Coca-Cola’s Atmakur plant on the
outskirts of Vijayawada from selling within Guntur, pending plant inspection by
an independent government agency.
The drastic step was
in response to a 16 August 2001 test report from the State Food Laboratory,
Hyderabad, which had found Thums Up’s 200 ml bottles contaminated with
Escherichia Coil (E-Coli). "Samples (did) not conform to the standards of
total plate count and coliform count. It is, therefore, adulterated," the
report said. E-Coli is a major cause of diarrhoea. Its presence indicates
contamination of water with human or cattle excreta, says the municipal
commissioner’s affidavit before the Hyderabad High Court. The commissioner had
taken samples following complaints by Guntur residents.
Here again Coca Cola
resorted to strong-arm methods. It moved the Hyderabad HC on 12 November 2001
asking it to declare the commissioner’s order "as illegal, void, without
authority, malafide and unconstitutional".
Mafia Ways of Coke
After coming into the
country and promising its bottlers security of contract, within a few years it
used strong-arm methods to take them over. Within just the first three years it
took-over 25 of the 54 bottlers that came under its fold after buying the brands
from Parle.
According to a report
in Business World: One of its bottlers, Mor, wasn’t the only one whose
purchase agreement was abruptly cancelled around 1999 by Coke. Kolkata-based
N.B. and S.R. Goenka, too, had entered into an agreement to sell their two
bottling plants at Kolkata and Hooghly under Black Diamond Beverages for an
amount exceeding Rs 90 crore. That agreement, too, was suddenly revoked. Delhi’s
Moon Beverages, run by Pradeep Agarwal, had a similar experience. In 1999,
Agarwal claims, Coke insisted that he sell out his Delhi facility as well as his
plants in Bilaspur (Narmada Drinks) and Nagpur (Superior Drinks. They had to
give up the companies at a fraction of its worth.
To take other
examples reported : The story of Kanti Parasrampuria of Indore Bottling. On 4
April 1999, he agreed to hand over his assets for only Rs 20 crore after months
of threats and arm-twisting. Says Parasrampuria: "I had to agree to sell both my
facilities for only Rs 20 crore. This is despite the fact that my business was
valued (at Rs 41.5 crore) by their own valuer M/s John Ford from Singapore. I
had no option but to sell at this price because they had already flooded the
market with products from an outside territory."
Visit any of those
who sold out and you will hear variants of the same tale. These are just a
few examples, others even faced direct physical threats over the phone and were
forced to sell-off their plant for less than half the agreed price. In all this
the governments acted as silent observers — which amounted to backing the
foreign company against the Indian bottlers.
Build a self-reliant Economy
India does not need
foreign companies to teach us how to make sweet coloured water, with a bit of
essence in it. But why is it the even an item like soft-drinks is fully given to
the imperialists? It is because the ruling-classes and the government are busy
selling one sector after the other to the imperialist powers, all in the name of
globalisation and ‘economic reforms’. This time they have been forced to take
notice as the people have come into the streets smashing Pepsi and Coke bottles,
schools and institutions have banned the drink, and there has been a massive
uproar against the two companies.
The operation of
Pepsi and Coke are only one example of TNC operations i the country. Their
misdeeds and malafidefunctioning are covered up by political collaboration.
India is being robbed
and ruined by these TNCs. All political parties, being in full agreement on
‘economic reforms’, act as their collaborators and agents. Now their entire
effort will be on how to bail out these companies and diffuse the peoples’ anger
against it. For their efforts they will get fat commissions from these foreign
mafia.
For there to be any
real action against these TNCs the entire people of the country must rise up,
boycott their goods, and create a mass upsurge against imperialist operations
here and their collaborators.
As a first step let
the agitation against Coke and Pepsi and a boycott of their drinks spread to
every corner of the country. Long back some Muslim organisations had called for
this boycott. So had many a naxalite organisation. Now vast sections of the
people have followed. Let this grow into a mighty movement as a first symbolic
step to kick all TNCs out of the country.
Struggle at the Kerala Coca Cola Plant
The struggle
against the Plachimada Plant of Coca Cola was launched on 22 April 2002 with a
symbolic blockade and an ongoing continuous picketing/dharna by mainly the
Adivasis, particularly by women and children, belonging to the Eravalar and
Malasar communities classified by the government as Primitive Tribes.
The Coca Cola
plant is located a few metres away from the main irrigation canal from the
Moolathara barrage. The site is located about three kms away from the Meenkara
dam reservoir, a few hundred meters west of Kambalathara and the Vengalakkayam
storage reservoirs and two kms away from the main Chitturpuzha (river).
The ground water
and hence water from the open wells have rapidly depleted in this perennially
rich paddy growing belt (paddy is abandoned now with the mostly landless
Adivasis loosing their jobs also). The water turns turbid or milky on boiling
and is unfit for drinking, bathing and washing clothes etc. Already over 1000
families have been affected in the surrounding villages within a radius of
five kms, of which a quarter are Adivasis and the rest Dalits and other non-Adivasis.
The villages severely affected are the ‘colonies’ of Adivasis and Dalits such
as Plachimada, Vijayanagaram, Veloor and Madhavan Nair colonies in the
Perumatty Panchayat and the Rajeev Nagar and Thodichipathy colonies in the
Pattanamchery Panchayat facing acute water shortage and contaminated water.
On the 9 June
2002, the agitation against the Coca Cola Plant at Plachimada in Palakkad
District, Kerala, India entered the 49th day. Dharna and picketing were going
on without respite in front the Coke Plant by the Eravalars and Malasars who
are Adivasis officially classified as Primitive Tribes. In the evening, a
protest rally took place. This time the police had refused permission to use
the mike. The peaceful protesters symbolically dumped the extremely foul
smelling dry sedimented slurry waste that Coca Cola had been dumping in the
surrounding villages surreptitiously in the fields, in front of the Coca Cola
Plant.
Police Crack
Down Begins
The police
officials were continuously attempting to provoke the protesters using abusive
language. A few metres away, a meeting began which was to be addressed by a
number of activists from across Kerala and adjacent parts of Tamilnadu.
As the meeting
progressed, one of the protesters was beaten in front of the plant without any
provocation whatsoever. When the police was questioned, they announced that
they were arresting the protesters. About 130 protesters were arrested of whom
30 were women and 9 were children, mostly babies, at around 5 pm and taken to
the Chittoor Police Station. Blouses of 5 Adivasi women were torn and some
senior officials were particularly keen to abuse and threaten the protesters
with further physical attack.
All Party Meet Opposes the
Anti Coca Cola Struggle
Earlier, and very
significantly, on the previous day (8 June 2002) they hurriedly cobbled up a
meeting, from amongst the Coca Cola workers, who are contract and daily wage
labourers, under the banner of "Thozhil Samrakshana Samithy" (Job Protection
Committee) They had organized an all party protest meeting in Plachimada
attended prominently by the local leaders of Janata Dal, CPI (M) and BJP. This
meeting was highly provocative and threatened the anti Coca Cola protesters
with violence. This is also to be connected to the provocative and brutal
behaviour as well as the mass arrests by the police against the peaceful
protest and resulted in an intensification of the struggle for the rights of
Adivasis for survival and resources for life water.
Earlier on 28 May
2002, 11 activists were arrested at nearby Vandithavalam when they were
campaigning there. Another 9 were also arrested from amongst the protesters in
front of the plant.
• Coca Cola had
approached the high court seeking protection to their property. Any way ever
since the launch of the struggle there has been a huge police contingent have
been stationed with the Coca Cola plant extending various facilities to
protect the plant.
• As the message
of the struggle spread in the surrounding areas, there was spontaneous
blackening or damage of Coca Cola hoardings in various parts of Chittoor taluk.
Coca Cola Virudha
Samara Samithy (Anti Coca Cola Struggle Committee) organized a mass rally and
public meeting at Plachimada on 4 August 2002, which marked the 105th day of
the continuous ongoing struggle against the Coca Cola monster that began on 22
April 2002. About 300 people have been arrested until date in this peaceful
democratic struggle on false cases despite vicious attempts of the Coca Cola
Company to thwart the struggle by various means. More than a 1000 people,
mostly Adivasis participated. Adivasis from Wayanad, Kannur and Nelliampathy
also participated. Led by the children and women, the rally commenced at
Pallimukku in Vandithavalam about 6 kms away from Plachimada
Amongst others, the rally was
addressed Sai Baba (AIPRF), A. Bhoomaiah (Telangana Jana Sabha of Andhra
Pradesh), Kumar (AIPRF, Karnataka), C.R Neelakantan Namboothiri (writer
and activist with Pooyankutty Samrakshana Samithy and National Alliance of
Peoples Movements, Eranakulam, Kerala), Senkottaiyan (Dalit Liberation Party,
Tamilnadu), Thomas Mathew (NAPM, Kerala), M.S Selvaraj (Vyavasayikal
Thozhilalar Munnetra Sangam, Nilgiris, Tamilnadu), Advocate Shina (Janakeeya
Cheruthunilpu Vedi, Kerala) Nagapandi and Leelavathi (Palanimalai Adivasikal
Viduthalai Iyakkam, Kodaikanal, Tamilnadu), Gopala-krishnan, (People’s Union
for Civil Liberties, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu) and Jaayachandran (Tamilnadu Green
Movement) amongst others besides Shivan Kutty and C. Bhanu from the Samara
Samithy. The meeting ended with a glorious tribute to the people in struggle,
especially the women and with renewed determination to expand the struggle
moving to the phase of the closure of the Coca Cola factory at Plachimada.
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