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India: Cola firms continue under
fire
By Ranjit Devraj
New Delhi - For all the fire they are under
today across India, US cola companies entered India with
a vengeance during the economic liberalization of the
1990s and have been at the forefront of the
liberalization process ever since.
Only last
month, the central government bent over backwards at
Coca Cola's behest to change long-held divestment rules
so that Indians who buy shares in a foreign company's
Indian subsidiary are no longer assured voting rights.
That policy change is a far cry from the days in
1977 when Coca-Cola was forced to quit India for
refusing to dilute equity stake in their Indian
subsidiaries to 40 percent by then-industries minister
George Fernandes, then in a socialist government. Today
Fernandes is defense minister in a right-wing, pro-US
government.
It appeared that nothing could stop
the onward march of Coca-Cola and its rival Pepsi until
last week, when a top Indian environmental group, the
Center for Science and the Environment (CSE) called a
press conference to charge that it could prove that the
fizzy drink products were loaded with several banned
pesticides. Results of tests conducted at the
laboratories CSE laboratories seemed to show that while
the soft drink manufacturing companies were keen on
promoting globalization, they did not care too much when
it came to maintaining global standards for their
products sold in India.
The revelations kicked
off an enormous furor all across India. In Mumbai, Coke
and Pepsi were told to quit India by activists who
stepped up what is turning into a national "break
bottle" campaign launched after publication of the CSE
study. Activists from powerful political groups such as
the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the
Samajwadi Party smashed Coke and Pepsi bottles and
trampled on cardboard cups bearing the their logos
outside Mumbai's busy Churchgate railway station.
"Coke and Pepsi quit India. You are playing with
our lives," shouted a mob of nearly 100 activists, who
also forced Coke and Pepsi outlets in and around the
station to down shutters. The activists tore down
posters of various Bollywood stars such as Shahrukh
Khan, Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor who advertise the
two brands. The youth wing of the BJP had on Wednesday
burned posters of the film stars as part of their
protest.
"The two multinationals have to get out
of India. We are giving them 10 days by which time final
test reports of these drinks will come," said Aslam
Sheikh, president of the youth wing of the Samajwadi
party. "If the reports are positive for pesticides we
will break every bottle the companies make. We will burn
down their vehicles carrying these drinks on the roads."
On Monday, the Delhi High Court refused to
entertain a petition filed by Pepsi asking for a gag
order on CSE on the grounds that the organization has
"no legal authority or recognition".
In fact,
Pepsi and its associates were forced to withdraw
allegations of "malafide intent" that it leveled against
CSE, a non-government organization with a formidable
track record of environmental campaigning based on hard
scientific evidence and research.
"We cannot
close our eyes. We cannot ignore the CSE report. The
agency is of high creditable performance," said K K Sud,
additional solicitor general. He was referring to a
similar expose by CSE six months ago that bottled water
sold by reputable companies, including Coca-Cola and
Pepsi, also contained unacceptable levels of pesticides.
That campaign has resulted in stringent
standards being applied to bottled drinking water.
Earlier, a hard-fought campaign by CSE against
dangers to health from diesel engines elicited court
orders that required all buses, taxis and public
transport vehicles in the national capital to switch to
environment-friendly compressed natural gas (CNG) as
fuel.
Justice B D Ahmed ordered the government
to intervene in the spat between the soft-drink
multinationals and the CSE and to carry out independent
tests to ascertain the level of pesticides in the
bottled soft drinks, and make the report available
within three weeks.
The court endorsed the CSE's
concern over the lack of standards for permissible
pesticide residues in soft drinks sold in India - and
instructed the government to review its standards after
comparing them with those existing in other parts of the
world.
CSE's director, Sunita Narain, said what
Pepsi attempted in court on Monday and failed to do was
bring on the equivalent of what is known in the US as a
Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or SLAPP.
"SLAPPs amount to silencing people into
submission. They are not just intimidation lawsuits,"
Narain explained. "They question the rights of
individuals and institutions to speak out on a public
issue, and to communicate their views to government
officials. They question the right of people to tell
their elected representatives what they think, want, or
believe in - in effect, for attempting to influence
government action," Narain said.
But Narain
pointed out that New York, California and about a dozen
other states in the United States have anti-SLAPP or
citizen protection acts. "The right of individuals and
organizations like CSE to carry out action in public
interest and in favor of public health cannot be
questioned. It is a right to hold industries and
governments accountable for their action, and should be
strengthened - not suppressed," she said.
The
CSE and Narain have been accused of going public with
their findings without first taking recourse to
government agencies or the consumer courts and by
ignoring "due process of law".
After the court
hearing, Pepsi's chief in India Rajiv Bakshi was seen on
television channels raising his right hand and swearing
that his company's products were devoid of pesticides
and met European Union standards.
"The public
has been misled - we test the raw water we use as well
as purified water and trust me, they meet EU standards
and have no pesticides," Bakshi said, confident the
"independent tests carried out by good accredited labs"
will support his claim. "We do not dispute the fact that
the tests were properly done [by the CSE] but you cannot
jump the gun like this," said Wajahat Habibullah,
secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs.
But Narain said that sometimes, it was necessary
in a country like India - with abysmal standards of
public health and hygiene - to resort to "shock tactics"
every now and then.
"The incidence of cancer in
this country is unbelievable." Narain said, adding that
Pepsi and Coca-Cola were only incidental in the CSE's
larger campaign. "Our issues are water, pesticides and
public health," she said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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