news: Coke adds life? Not in India

[Guest guest]

Coke adds life? In India, impoverished farmers are fighting to stop drinks

giant 'destroying livelihoods'

 

 

By Paul Vallely, Jon Clarke and Liz Stuart in Kerala

 

25 July 2003

Three years ago, the little patch of land in the green, picturesque rolling

hills of Palakkad in the Indian state of Kerala yielded 50 sacks of rice and

1,500 coconuts a year. It provided work for dozens of labourers. Then Coca-Cola

arrived and built a 40-acre bottling plant next door.

In his last harvest, Shahul Hameed, the farmer who owns the modest

smallholding, could coax only five sacks of rice from the land, and a meagre 200

coconuts. His irrigation wells have run dry. Meanwhile, the huge factory

extracts up

to 1.5 million litres of water a day from the deep wells it has drilled into

the aquifer to produce Coke, Fanta, Sprite and the drink the locals call,

without irony, Thumbs-Up.

But the cruellest twist is that the plant bottles a brand of mineral water

while local people - who could never afford it - have to walk up to six miles

twice a day to fetch water. The turbid, brackish water which remains at the

bottom of their wells is now too high in dissolved salts to be healthy to drink,

cook with or even wash in. Some claim it made them ill.

As the summer and the water crisis intensifies, the hardship of the local

people is worsening. So is the row between them and the company whose name is

for

many a synonym for the global power of transnational capitalism. For the past

459 days, there has been a daily picket of the factory. There have been

street demonstrations and rallies, and spontaneous blackening of Coca-Cola

hoardings. More than 300 people have been arrested.

Then earlier this year the Perumatty panchayat (local council) revoked the

factory's licence to operate. It did so despite losing almost half of its annual

income - some 700,000 rupees (about £9,000) - from the decision. Coca-Cola's

lawyers appealed to the next level of government, which suspended the

revocation and allowed the factory to continue operating. The matter comes to a

head

at an appeal before the state government next week.

It is an iconic dispute, a David and Goliath battle between multinational

power and some of the world's poorest people. Many of those affected are classed

by the Indian government as " primitive tribals " . Most of the rest are dalits -

" untouchables " . Few in power took much notice when they began to complain,

six months after the factory opened, of changes in the quantity and quality of

well water. So the anger of the local people grew.

Shahul Hameed looked out over one of his bone-dry paddy fields this week and

visibly shook with anger. " My irrigation pump, which I installed with a bank

loan in 1980, used to run for 12 hours throughout the night; now it runs dry

after 30 minutes, " he said, above the noise of clinking glass from the factory

next door. " Coke managed to acquire all the lowest lying land in the area and

after digging a series of deep wells they took all the water. It is downright

theft. "

Every day 85 lorryloads leave the premises, each containing 550 cases of 24

bottles. To produce them the company siphons off enough water to meet the

minimum requirements of about 20,000 people. They have not only lost their water

but, with the dried-out farms closing, also their jobs. Those worst affected are

up to 10,000 landless labourers.

Coca-Cola denies responsibility for all this. In a statement from its

headquarters in Atlanta, it said: " We would like to emphasise that, to the best

of

our knowledge, these allegations made against the plant in Kerala are untrue.

 

more at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=427327

[Guest guest]

I read about this on Anita Roddick's site. It's disgraceful. Personally I never drink coke - I wish I could persuade others not to.

 

Jo

 

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