Communities around India, most specifically in the vicinity of bottling plants, are using democratic processes through boycotts and campaigns to demand transparency of operations of Coca Cola and to demand that it stop operations if the company cannot end processes that are affecting lives and livelihoods of people in the vicinity of these plants.

A number of villages have declared themselves as Cola free zones. Expressing solidarity to the Plachimada struggle, Pinangode village in the Wynadu dist of Kerala was declared Cola free zone. The official announcement was made by Member of Parliament, Veerandra kumar, in a well attended public gathering as a culmination of a month long boycott campaign by local civic society groups.

Perumathura, another coastal village, had declared itself Cola free the day before. The Solidarity Youth Movement, a pro-Jamaat-e-Islami organisation, has been active in holding Coke accountable in this community. Two other places that have said “no” to colas are Plachimada, the home of the Coke unit in Palakkad district, and Kuttiyadi in Kozhikode district. In both places, activists have set up check-posts barring the passage of cola-laden vehicles.

Beverage industry sources, however, said the attempt to block colas from being sold in these places would not have any impact on sales in Kerala, which already has the lowest per capita consumption in the country. The average per capita consumption in the state is roughly three drinks (600 ml) whereas in Delhi it is 55 drinks. “What dent can it make on cola sales in 2 sq km in a coastal hamlet where most people anyhow do not drink colas?” a top industry source asked.

Ironically, this response presents the complete lack of understanding of the reasons of these boycotts among the leadership of the beverage industry. The boycotts are driven by destruction of livelihoods and societies in the vicinity of the bottling units and such response by the industry implies that they only care about their economic profits – they are really not bothered by how their processes are hurting these local communities.

Community disgust of Coke’s policies has driven the state government to take up the case against the bottling unity at the Supreme Court. India Resource Center reports:
The state government of Kerala has challenged the company's right to use groundwater in the Supreme Court of India, arguing that water is being taken from poor communities to produce drinking water for the rich.

The state appeal also argued that over extraction of water by the Coca-Cola Company violates three international legal regimes including American Common Law Reasonable Use Rule, the Restatement (Second) of Torts Reasonable Use and the Doctrine of Correlative Rights, governing the use of ground water.

These campaigns for the rights of communities to access their water are active not just in Kerala. In Mehdiganj, near Varanasi, the Member of Parliament representing the local constituency has announced at a public rally that he supports ideologically and logistically the campaign for the people’s rights over their water and opposition of the Mehdiganj’s bottling plants policies.

In Gangaikondan, local civic groups are opposing a new bottling plant that is plant in the local industrial complex. Rallies, campaigns, workshops are being constantly organized to oppose the plant and keep the problems of bottling plants and their impact on local communities in focus.

Increasingly, civic communities around India are beginning to recognize the impact of operations of the bottling plants on their own communities especially with regards to depleting water resources. Unfortunately the Cola companies have reacted only based on economic impact of these concerns, not the human suffering that they cause; in fact their only strategy has been to use their PR machinery to counter the human suffering instead of finding ways of mitigating them.

R.Ajayan, Convener, Plachimada Solidarity Committee may be reached at neerajam2004@yahoo.com

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