- KERALA -- 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.
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- 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.
-
- "In fact, we believe that the allegations are politically
motivated. The plant concerned has not drained the aquifers and uses only
six bore wells. In fact, the local villages receive tankers of free water
supplies each day from the plant to supplement their existing water sources."
And, it said, the company was establishing an elaborate system for rainwater
harvesting.
-
- The real culprit, the company says, is a reduction in
rainfall in the area - from 1,213 mm in 2000, to 1,147mm in 2001 and just
670mm in 2002. It quotes India's National Geophysical Research Institute
in Hyderabad as saying: "There is no field evidence of overexploitation
of the groundwater reserves in the plant area."
-
- All of this is disputed. A local human rights and development
organisation, VAK, which is funded by Christian Aid, claims state meteorological
reports show rainfall rose between 2000 and 2001. Another campaign group,
CorpWatch India, challenges Coke's claims about rainwater harvesting, saying
"how much you save through your rainwater harvesting is not the issue;
how much additional load you add to the aquifer is".
-
- The quality of the water is an issue too. CorpWatch sent
samples for analysis to the United States. The resulting report concluded
that high levels of dissolved salts were produced by the fast rate of depletion
of the aquifer - and that washing in it would cause "severe hardship".
-
- Then there is pollution. Chemical effluents produced
by bottle-washing contaminate the groundwater, protesters say. Early attempts
to dry the foul-smelling slurry and market it as fertiliser failed when
farmers started to develop sores on their skin and noticed that their coconut
palms were dying. The plant tried to give it away but no one wanted it.
Protesters have been gathering it up and dumping it in front of the plant.
-
- The company denies there is a problem. It says: "Technologies
are also equivalent to most Coca-Cola bottling plants in the United States
and Europe. Further, our effluents comply with standards and norms set
by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board."
-
- The local authorities have backed the multinational,
arguing that it creates jobs. A wide spectrum of politicians shared a platform
at a rally outside the factory last year to threaten "dire consequences"
if the protests did not stop.
-
- Demonstrators took no notice. Local council tax records,
they said, showed that there are only 134 permanent staff at the plant.
Indeed, some of the protesters had once worked there but quit. "I
used to get terrible headaches working there," Saraswathi Kaliappan,
38, who worked as a bottle washer for two years, said. Conditions were
so poor she claimed she wouldn't go back if the pay was doubled.
-
- But then, in April, the local council changed its mind.
Prompted by new data from the Kerala State Health Department that people
should not drink from wells neighbouring the plant, it acted. The panchayat
decided not to renew the industrial licence issued to Coca-Cola on the
ground of "protecting public interest".
-
- "We were persuaded the company would bring money
and jobs to the area," Arychami Krishnan, the council's president,
said. "But the reality is few local people have been employed and
the water situation and pollution is a calamity."
-
- The decision did not stand for long. Coca-Cola workers
set up a counter-protest outside the council headquarters and 1,000 demonstrators
marched on the town hall. The US ambassador to India wrote to the Indian
Prime Minister, stating: "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." The Kerala
Local Self Government Department ruled the factory could stay open pending
next week's appeal hearing.
-
- Aid agency campaigners have protested. "This is
a shocking situation where it appears that the rights of a big corporation
are being put above those of poor communities," an Action Aid spokesman
said. "This is a classic case of corporate irresponsibility,"
said Christian Aid, which is calling for "binding international regulations".
-
- But few expect that the final verdict for the waterless
people of Kerala will be anything other than "Let them drink Coke".
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=427327
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