India's cola controversy widens

[Guest guest]

By Raju Bist

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EH08Df07.html

 

MUMBAI - It all began on Tuesday when Sunita Narain, director of the Center for

Science and Environment (CSE), called a press conference in New Delhi. " Twelve

major cold drink brands manufactured by Coca-Cola and Pepsi and sold in and

around Delhi contain a deadly cocktail of pesticide residues, " she told

reporters. " These pesticides include potent chemicals which can cause cancers,

damage the nervous and reproductive systems and reduce bone mineral density, "

she added.

 

The short press conference would soon put the two cola bottlers in the

spotlight, lead to an outcry from the floor of the Indian parliament and ignite

protests all across the country. The cola bottlers are being inexorably drawn

into a nation-wide controversy that shows no sign of abating. Assembly elections

are to be held in three important states, with general elections six months

away. Multinational-bashing, a favorite political pastime, appears inevitable.

 

Indeed, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the ruling BJP's youth wing,

said on Wednesday that it would seek to " teach the two bottlers a lesson,

threatening to launch a batli-todo [bottle breaking] agitation all over the

country from Thursday if the government did not withdraw supplies of Coca-Cola

and Pepsi. (Most soft drinks continue to be sold in India in glass bottles.)

 

The non-government organization's findings were immediately denounced by Sanjiv

Gupta, president and CEO of Coca-Cola India and Rajiv Bakshi, chairman of Pepsi

India, who said that the CSE report was " baseless " and that they were open to

the idea of testing by an internationally-accredited independent laboratory.

" Our products are tested by top-grade laboratories like the Wimta laboratory in

Hyderabad [south India] and the T & O laboratory in the Netherlands. They are of

world class and the same as what we sell in Europe and the US, " they said by way

of a joint declaration.

 

Nonetheless, the charges are not that easy to dismiss. Both Coke and Pepsi have

been hit with other charges of environmental degradation over the past few

months. And CSE, perhaps India's most reputable NGO, declared that its tests had

been conducted at its pollution monitoring laboratory and had discovered

residues of four extremely toxic pesticides and insecticides - lndane, DDT,

malathion and chlorpyrifos - in Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, Mirinda Orange,

Mirinda Lemon, Blue Pepsi, 7-Up, Coca-Cola, Fanta, Limca, Sprite and Thums Up.

The samples had been purchased from different parts of the capital city between

the months of April and August, she said.

 

Narain said that in all the samples, the levels of pesticide residues far

exceeded the maximum residue limit for pesticides in water used as " food " , set

down by the European Economic Commission (EEC). In all the PepsiCo brands, the

total pesticides on an average were 36 times higher than the EEC limits. The

Coca-Cola brands contained levels 30 times higher. " Our findings cannot be

ignored, " said Narain. " The demand for these soft drinks is on the rise. On an

average, an Indian consumes six bottles and every Delhite 50 bottles in a year. "

 

As in many other parts of the world, controversy is nothing new to the Indian

operations of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Had it been any other organization leveling

the charges, they could have dismissed it as yet another case of MNC-bashing.

But CSE was founded two decades ago by the late Anil Agarwal, a crusading

environmentalist. Its chairman is Dr M S Swaminathan, one of India's foremost

agricultural scientists and winner of international accolades like the Ramon

Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize and the Tyler Environment Award.

 

It was the CSE that led a sustained and successful campaign against vehicular

pollution in New Delhi which resulted in India's Supreme Court asking all

commercial vehicles to switch over to the much cleaner compressed natural gas

fuel last year. It has now launched a rainwater harvesting campaign that asks

governmental bodies to take measures to keep water clean by not allowing

polluting activities to take place in the catchment area. The CSE is also in the

forefront against pollution in Indian rivers, streams and lakes.

 

Narain's press conference was beamed live on all major TV channels and carried

on the front page of afternoon papers. Alarmed at the potential damage all the

bad publicity could bring to their Indian businesses, the two MNCs decided to

fight back by giving their own versions. The arch rivals also did something

unique – burying their differences, the executives of the two companies thus

called a joint press conference.

 

That did little to stem the tide of protest. Reacting to the CSE report, the

government dropped the sodas from parliament's canteen. The ban was announced by

E Ahmed, chairman of the committee on food management, while participating in an

impromptu debate in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of parliament) on the CSE's

findings. Simultaneously, the government announced that it would work on revised

quality norms for carbonated beverages. One of the proposals being mooted: only

bottled water be used to manufacture soft drinks.

 

The monsoon session of the Indian parliament is now in progress and on the next

day, it was the turn of Indian health minister, Sushma Swaraj, to respond to the

concerns raised by members of parliament. She described the issue as " serious

and startling " and told them that the government had sought a report on the CSE

findings. " The government will take steps keeping in mind the collective wisdom

of the members here. I will collect all the facts and come back to the house, "

she said.

 

Swaraj is a minister of the BJP, the largest of the 23-member coalition

government that is now in power in New Delhi. She and other senior BJP ministers

assured journalists that the government would investigate the matter thoroughly

and if needed, the legal machinery of the government would be asked to inquire

into the matter.

 

Meanwhile, the east Indian state of West Bengal, India's last bastion of

communism and where MNCs have always feared to open shop, has decided to inspect

all Coca-Cola and Pepsi plants in its territories. Also, the Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) in Maharashtra, India's most industrialized state, has

decided to undertake a project to test samples from water sources used by cola

and bottled water manufacturers. " If our tests prove the presence of

insecticides in the soft drinks then we will cancel the licenses given to the

five plants, " warned FDA commissioner Uttam Khobragade in a press statement.

 

But environmentalist Sampa Banerjee does not feel that the results of the CSE's

findings in New Delhi will be replicated all over the country. " Unlike places

like Maharashtra, there are more pesticides in north Indian areas like New Delhi

because they are mostly agrarian regions, " she says. The whole problem has

arisen, she continues, because the companies have tried to save in two ways - by

using ground water instead of bottled water as a raw material (water constitutes

80 percent of any soft drink by volume) and by not investing in cleaning up

contaminated ground water.

 

The contaminated soft drinks controversy could not have come at a worse time for

the two majors. The Indian public – which revels at the sight of MNCs squirming

– has still not forgotten the two being hauled up the Supreme Court for causing

environmental damage to the Rohtang Pass area in the Upper Himalayas by painting

their advertisements on rocks. The court imposed a penalty of Rs 200,000

(US$4,300)each on Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

 

Coca-Cola, in particular, has been receiving a lot of bad press. Its celebrity

icon, actor Salman Khan, is now facing trial after being involved in a hit and

run case, accused of killing a Mumbai citizen with his Toyota SUV six months

ago. More recently, the Greenpeace Environment Trust, the Indian arm of the

international NGO, urged the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) to

serve a closure notice on Coca-Cola India's bottling plant at Plachimada in

Palakkad district in the south Indian state of Kerala. The accusation: the

sludge produced at the facility and supplied to farmers as fertilizer contained

dangerous levels of cadmium and lead.

 

A probe was launched by the Kerala government to check out the hazardous content

in the fertilizers. And on the day the two cola majors were being boycotted by

Indian parliamentarians, the KSPCB announced its verdict: there were indeed high

levels of cadmium in the Coca-Cola sludge. The KSPCB has now instructed the

company not to let the sludge out of factory premises and not to use it as

fertilizer, even within the premises, as a matter of precaution.

 

The Coca-Cola senior management is refusing to be drawn into reacting to the

KSPCB verdict, saying it has still not read the judgment in full. But it is more

than willing to speak out against Narain and the CSE findings. " All this talk of

pesticides in our soft drinks is humbug. My children drink the same products at

home, " says Gupta. " There seems to be a hidden agenda among all this backlash, "

adds Bakshi, without elaborating. Both the MNC chiefs added they were

contemplating legal action against the CSE.

 

But legal recourse may not end Coca-Coca and Pepsi's woes. In fact, it may just

aggravate them. For six months down the road, assembly elections are going to be

held in three important Indian states and general elections are scheduled after

a further six months. Election campaigning has already begun, slowly but

assiduously.

 

The reaction in the Lok Sabha canteen, minister Swaraj's assurance to her fellow

parliamentarians, the BJP youth wing's theatrical posturing, all point to a

favorite past-time among Indian politicians, one that goes down very well with

the common Indian public - MNC bashing.

 

Before independence, British institutions were at the receiving end. Later,

particularly after the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, it is the MNCs who have

been brought into the line of fire. The agitation is expected to intensify in

the coming days.

 

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact

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