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Protest against Coca-Cola: Why the 20-year struggle of Kerala’s Plachimada goes on

Plachimada holds a peculiar place in Kerala’s history of agitations as a village that brought a corporate behemoth to its knees. A tribal agricultural village situated in Palakkad on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, Plachimada saw unrelenting protests against Coca-Cola, which had set up a cola bottling plant there in 2000. The local residents alleged that the plant had led to scarcity of drinking water and decline in agricultural produce.

While the plant was shut down 18 years ago, the residents have not been successful in getting compensation for the losses they incurred. An Action Council, led by activists and supported by local people, organised a satyagraha protest in the village last week on Independence Day. The group is firm that the protests will continue until Coca-Cola pays compensation.

The Plachimada plant was operated by Coca-Cola’s Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited. As per the agreement between the company and the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), up to 1.5 million litres of water was drawn from six borewells inside the factory compound. What followed was something the village had never witnessed before. The residents soon began experiencing water shortage, with water levels in wells and ponds seeing a sharp decline. The water also became so contaminated that it caused health issues in those who used it. Farmers observed a decline in agricultural produce caused by disposal of sludge that contained metals like cadmium, lead and chromium. The company had also distributed a fertiliser to the farmers in the panchayat. The use of this fertiliser turned the farms lands barren, reports Madhyamam Online .

The villagers soon started opposing the plant. Tribal leader CK Janu inaugurated the anti-Coca-Cola protest in April 2002, which gathered momentum with prominent activists joining in. The KSPCB and the Perumatty panchayat, under which Plachimada falls, also backed the village. The panchayat did not renew the plant’s licence citing exploitation of natural resources.

The factory was eventually closed down in 2004, thanks to the mounting protests.

The long battle for compensation

In 2009, the Kerala government appointed a High Power Committee headed by then Additional Chief Secretary K Jayakumar to study the damages caused by the Coca-Cola plant. The committee found that the plant had caused a loss of Rs 216.26 crore in Plachimada. However, the alternative governments didn’t make any honest attempts to recover the money from the company.

In 2011, the Kerala government unanimously passed the Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims’ Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal Bill, 2011 to set up a special tribunal to realise the compensation from Coca-Cola. The President, however, returned the Bill , in a huge setback to the people.

The then Pinarayi Vijayan government had mulled reintroducing the Bill with changes. Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan had said that discussions were held in this direction.

In 2017, Coca-Cola made a submission before the Supreme Court that it had no intention of restarting operations at Plachimada.

After Action Council leaders had a meeting with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in June 2017, it was agreed that the issue would be addressed in three months. But five years later, there has been no action.

The Council blamed the government for not taking any effective steps to recover the compensation from the company. Vilayodi Venugopal, one of the activists who has been at the forefront of the Plachimada protests since the beginning, told TNM that the Left government still has a lackadaisical approach towards the issue despite continuing in power.

The Council also blamed the alternative governments that came to power in the state after the High Power Committee was formed. It alleged that the Union governments led by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) also did not take any move to pass the Plachimada Bill all these years.

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A timeline of the historic Plachimada agitation, from Keraleeyam Magazine

7th March 2018

When in July 2017, Coca-Cola informed India’s Supreme Court that it won’t restart its bottling plant in Plachimada, Kerala, it brought to a close a decade-long agitation spearheaded by the local community comprising mostly dalits and adivasis. This historic struggle has now been comprehensively documented in a digital project by Neethu Das of Keraleeyam Magazine.

Water wars: Plachimada vs Coca-Cola

The protracted legal battle between the tribals of Plachimada and the  beverage  behemoth, Coca-Cola drew to a close on Thursday as the latter made a submission before the Supreme Court that it had no intention of restarting operations at its contentious facility in central Kerala. Here is all you need to know about the long drawn out dispute:

Where is Plachimada?

Plachimada is a sparsely populated tribal hamlet in Perumatty panchayat in  Palakkad  district. Data from the latest round of the socio-economic census reveals that 60% of the population is engaged in agriculture. This corresponds to 2,303 of the 3,802 people who are of working-age in Perumatty, highlighting the importance of agriculture to the local community.

When did Coca-Cola set up shop in Plachimada?

The Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the Atlanta-based manufacturer of aerated drinks, erected its factory in a 38-acre plot in Plachimada in 1999. The plant is situated in the midst of agricultural land, which has historically belonged to the Adivasis.

Palakkad is also known as the rice bowl of  Kerala.  In its halcyon days, before the company’s relationship with the locals soured, the facility employed 284 people. Audits reveal that around 600 cases comprising of 24 bottles of 300ml capacity each, were produced every day.

What went wrong?

As per the agreement struck by the company with the KSPCB, up to 1.5 million litres of water was drawn commercially from 6 bore-wells situated inside the factory compound. The permit granted Coca-Cola the right to extract ground water to meet its production demands of 3.8 litres of water for a litre of cola.

As a result, the water table receded, as did the quality of groundwater. Detailed sampling of the water collected from the region revealed high concentration of calcium, and magnesium ions.

Moreover, the colloidal slurry that was generated as a by-product was initially sold to villagers as fertilizer.

In 2003, the BBC, in its Face The Facts programme, declared that samples of slurry that was being deployed as fertilizer were found to contain dangerous levels of toxic metals and the known carcinogen, cadmium.

“The area’s farming industry has been devastated and jobs, as well as the health of the local people, have been put at risk,” said John Waite, the show’s presenter, as he read out the verdict of scientists from the University of Exeter, where samples collected from Plachimada were sent for analysis.

Water quality in districts of Kerala

In a white paper titled  Spatial Assessment of Groundwater Quality in Kerala , researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore infer that Palakkad’s groundwater fares badly on most counts, having a large number of dissolved minerals, above the desirable limit.

Plachimada has been mentioned for failing to meet the quality norms on salinity, alkalinity, and high traces of magnesium, and chloride, among other minerals.

Popular protest

Public anger led to the mobilisation of villagers who formed the ‘Coca-Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy,’ a body fighting for the closure of the polluting soda factory, in April, 2002. For a year, awareness camps and torchlight vigils were organised, resulting in several villagers picketing the factory. The cola giant slapped charges against the leaders of the rebellion.

Federalism and the law

The Perumatty panchayat took matters into its own hands by refusing to renew Coca-Cola’s license on account of the exploitation of natural resources that had deleterious effects on public health, as well as agricultural yield. The company challenged this order in the Kerala High Court, which directed the litigants to approach the government’s Local Self-Government Department (LSD). The LSD overruled the panchayat’s order banning the license.

Following the BBC report, the government was forced to sit up and take notice. The KSPCB conducted tests which corroborated the findings of the Exeter researchers.

The panchayat again approached the High Court, which observed this time around that “groundwater was a public property held in trust by a government and that it had no right to allow a private party to overexploit the resource to the detriment of the people.” However, the LSD refused to relent from its earlier position on legal grounds. The company was allowed to continue operation as long as it found alternative sources of water supply.

Things came to a head when the Supreme Court, in 2005, issued a notice to the company allowing it to draw 5,00,000 litres of groundwater per day.

In the intervening years, members of the Coca-Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy, as well as the village committee held held awareness programmes to draw public attention to their struggle for corporate accountability. The factory had been in lock-down since 2004, with the legal stalemate ensuring that future of the company’s operations in Plachimada remained uncertain.

The 12-year-old case finally reached closure after much wrangling, when Coca-Cola relinquished its license, stating in the SC that it did not intend to resume production from Plachimada.

VIEW/DOWNLOAD Plachimada Struggle: Over the Years (PDF) A comprehensive timeline of the Plachimada agitation, with links to important records and documents Compiled by Neethu Das, Keraleeyam Magazine

RELATED Obituary: Veloor Swaminathan, who led a legendary fight against Coca Cola that’s finding new resonance K.P. Sasi Swaminathan along with Mylamma were the initial foundations of the historic struggle at Plachimada, Kerala. The struggle initiated by a small group of these Adivasis with Dalits and farmers forced one of the largest corporate powers in the world to back down and quit Plachimada. Swaminathan passed away on March 14, 2015.

A Look at the Legal Issues Plachimada’s Struggle for Water Against Coca-Cola Has Brought Up Gayatri Raghunandan, The Wire Several important issues were at stake in this tug of war – the idea of public access to common resources like air or water, the limits of the decision-making powers of local self-governing bodies like panchayats, and the acceptance of the polluter pays principle (PPP). However, these issues could not be tested in law in the Supreme Court. It is all the more important to look closely at the important issues that this case has thrown up, namely the importance of the public trust doctrine, the role of local self governing bodies in decision making, and the relevance of the PPP.

Why the Coke-Pepsi boycott in Tamil Nadu is a good thing Nityanand Jayaraman, The News  Minute Nityanand Jayaraman writes: Coke and Pepsi are the best-known agents of commodification of water. It’s unethical and immoral for a resource that is so vital to life to be commodified. So, every nail in the coffins of companies involved in selling water –like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Tata and so on– is a nail well driven.

Here’s why bottled water is one of the biggest scams of the century Business Insider Some of us get our water for free from the tap. The rest pay for it – at the cost of roughly $US100 billion a year. But there are plenty of reasons to stop buying bottled water. Read on to find out all the things you didn’t know about your drinking water.

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The Popular Struggle against Coca-Cola in Plachimada, Kerala

This article is a case study of the campaign against the Coca-Cola Company in Plachimada, Kerala, India, which was a reaction against alleged environmental damages and water depletion caused by the company's production of soft drinks. It addresses the following questions: How was civil society used as a platform for this struggle and what was the outcome? Did this campaign affect the political participation of its members? The study is based on interviews and surveys of the villagers in Plachimada and connects to theories on social movements and political participation, as well as to the debate on Indian civil society. The findings presented show the importance of having a local, core group in charge of the campaign, while simultaneously making use of existing support groups at the regional, national, and international levels. It also reveals that after reaching its goal, the campaign has resulted in a general increase of political participation amongst its members.

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Economic and Political Weekly, 2006

The struggle in Plachimada, Kerala, against Coca-Cola not only raises issues of mindless destruction of groundwater by a multinational company, but also exposes the gross inadequacies in the laws of governance and the rights to water. It also exposes the inability of political democracy, as we know it, to address weaknesses in law and governance. The state government meekly surrendered the opportunity that the struggle bestowed at the altar of the judiciary, rather than take advantage of it for bold political decision-making. The Plachimada struggle calls for the recovery of the commons by communities.

The paper presents a brief overview of the main strands in social sciences theorising on movements. It discusses the debates on new social movements and non-party political formations in India. In the context of the contributions in this volume on movements and campaigns, it examines how contemporary struggles have redefined classical notions of power, oppression and liberation. It also explores how these struggles grapple with 'difference', how they strategise their relationship to the state, to development and to the realm of the cultural and the symbolic. Finally, the paper looks at the need for a coming together of struggles and movements on broad agendas.

SOPPECOM, 2010

The paper will study the meaning, typologies and the role of a social movement in the mobilization of the masses. It is essential to study chronologically the various movements recorded by Social Scientists as a whole. The objectives of social movements can be known by examining the style of leaders, ideology and mobilization methods. The definition, meaning and types of social movements are dealt with. This paper examines the Peasant, Civil Rights Movements and NGO's movement. A study of government role and also the other groups that are actively associated with the movement. What is the impact of the movement if any? In this context I want to present my observations. Very few studies were conducted in the past by Political Scientists. .Hence, it is appropriate to make an attempt and analyse a few issues.

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Reviewers comments: • ‘This is a long needed, finely researched, and admirably presented work of scholarship. It is required reading not just for scholars and researchers, but also those with any interest in the changing, emergent, future Indian society.’ Arun Agrawal, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, School of Natural Resources & Environment, University of Michigan. • ‘A very readable, succinct and excellent synthesis of the experiences of a number of organizations and advocacy movements. India’s dynamic and complex civil society is captured well and includes linkages at the local, national and global levels.’ Sushma Ganguly, Former Sector Manager, Agriculture and Rural Development, World Bank. • ‘…the strengths of the book are its lucid exposition, its coverage of a number of contrasting case studies, and its clear and unromantic acknowledgment of the limitations and constraints on activist action.’ Prof David Gellner. Asian Studies Review, 37(1), pp. 112-113.

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Coca Cola on the UN’s Hands as Plachimada Still Waits for Justice

The latest stories of the author can be read at…

Nakeeyat Dramani Sam holds up a placard at an informal stocktaking session at the COP27 climate summit, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 18, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

• On November 4, villagers of Plachimada in Kerala wrote to the UN to remove Coca Cola as a sponsor of the COP27 climate talks.
• For more than a decade now, they have been demanding compensation for pollution caused by a Coca Cola bottling plant in Plachimada.
• Coca Cola has refused to pay, but turned the plant into a COVID care facility and sponsored COP27, actions that have drawn accusations of ‘greenwashing’.

Kochi : Representatives from the world’s countries originally had until yesterday to discuss loss and damage caused by the climate crisis at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt.

It is only just, many say, that the economically developed nations pay for their historical carbon emissions, which have contributed greatly to climate change – the consequences of which are now being borne disproportionately by their developing counterparts.

At the same time, thousands of kilometres and an ocean away, a small hamlet in Kerala has a justicial demand of its own, and it is directed at the UN, the talks’ organiser.

The villagers here wrote to UN secretary-general António Guterres to remove Coca Cola as a sponsor of the event.

The story of Plachimada and its people is one of loss, a seemingly unending wait and of justice delayed.

The Plachimada struggle

In 2000, Coca Cola began operating a bottling plant in Plachimada, in the district of Palakkad. It produced several beverages, including Coca Cola, Limca, Fanta, Thums Up and Sprite. The plant also provided jobs to around 400 villagers. But soon, Plachimada began to realise the dire cost they had paid for this benefit.

The village, located in an arid area, was already water-stressed. The plant drew water from underground aquifers and the water table fell further. Plachimada’s women had to travel longer distances to fetch drinking water.

The locals also complained that sludge from the factory – which the factory operators were distributing as free fertiliser to the villagers, most of whom were farmers – was contaminating land and water resources. The villagers, half of them Adivasis and Dalits, began protesting against the plant in 2002 under the banner of ‘Coca Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy’, or the ‘Anti-Coca Cola Struggle Committee’.

In 2003, a BBC journalist who came to report on the issue took some samples of the sludge with him back to the UK. “Analysis of the black sludge-like material, conducted at the University of Exeter, reveals that not only was it useless as a fertiliser but it contained a number of toxic metals, including cadmium and lead,” a BBC press release in July 2003 read.

British scientists said that the concentration of toxins in these samples would cause serious problems, such as “polluting the land, local water supplies and the food chain”. Lead and cadmium are also toxic to humans in high concentrations and can cause liver and kidney failure.

Even the little water that remained in the wells and the ponds after Coca Cola took its share – 0.8-1.5 million litres a day, per one estimate – wasn’t fit for consumption. In fact, more tests revealed that the water was utterly unfit for drinking (it was highly acidic) nor could it be used for cooking, washing or farming, C.R. Bijoy wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2006.

Show-cause notices, denials of clearances and licences, and legal battles ensued. Protestors, including many women, stood their ground: the bottling plant had to close down. They had a groundswell of public support on their side.

The bottling plant finally ceased operations in 2004-2005. The government imposed severe restrictions on water use, and Coca Cola considered moving its factory after compensating the villagers, according to Bijoy. The plant remains closed to this day.

Polluter doesn’t pay

It was a victory – but not a clean one. While the plant’s environmental pollution and groundwater depletion ceased, Plachimada’s people await, even today, something equally crucial: reparations for what was taken from them.

A 2010 report compiled by a ‘high power committee’ constituted by the Kerala government listed what Coca Cola took from them in detail. The committee consisted of environmental scientists and officials from the agriculture department, the Kerala water authority, the state pollution control board and some other Central and state departments.

The report found that farming households experienced a “drastic decline in crop productivity caused by insufficient irrigation and other factors”. Most farmers had reported a decline in agricultural income. People had to move to other villages in search of work.

The report found a “clear linkage” between the prevalence of diseases – from itching to hairfall and diarrhoea – and pollution due to the bottling plant. The plant’s activities had violated numerous laws, including the Environment (Protection) Act 1984, the Factories Act 1948 and the SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989.

The report recommended that Coca Cola pay a total of Rs 216.26 crore as compensation to the villagers. In this amount, agricultural losses alone accounted for Rs 84 crore while the estimated cost of pollution of water sources was around Rs 62 crore.

Coca Cola is yet to pay a single rupee.

This month, Coca Cola was one of the main sponsors of the COP27 climate talks, conducted under the aegis of the UN and as part of its Framework Convention on Climate Change, where ‘loss and damage’ came to dominate negotiations.

Another hot topic was climate justice – the complicated but necessary road to acknowledging and ‘resolving’ the fact that the climate crisis affects the underprivileged and the vulnerable disproportionately. A recent report by the UN climate science panel emphasised that effective climate policy won’t be possible without climate justice.

‘Greenwashing’

The letter penned by Vilayodi Venugopal and K. Sakthivel, the chairperson and the general convenor of the Plachimada Anti Coca Cola Struggle Committee, to Guterres on November 4 is very clear.

“We request you to remove Coca Cola from the sponsorship of COP27 as they are gross violators of all environmental norms and to restore the integrity of the decisive environmental conference. We also request you to kindly use your good offices to impress upon Coca Cola … their duty to compensate for the damages caused, as per the reference report along with interest at prevailing rates.”

They are yet to hear from the UN, the convenor of the committee, K.V. Biju, confirmed to The Wire Science .

On November 6, the day the COP27 talks began, Plachimada’s residents protested outside the Coca Cola bottling plant. “Remove the top polluter Coca Cola from the sponsoring COP27 global summit on climate crisis @ Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt,” read a red banner they held up.

The Plachimada Anti Coke Struggle Committee protest outside the plant demanding Removal of the top polluter Coca Cola from sponsoring CoP27. pic.twitter.com/70CfgKc1bz — Friends of the Earth India (@FoEIndia) November 6, 2022

That Coca Cola is a sponsor of the COP is a “dangerous direction” for a climate conference to take, ecologist S. Faizi, one of the members of the ‘high power committee’ that assessed the damage wrought by the Coca Cola plant, told The Wire Science .

“This is a shame on global governments,” he said. The COP “is an event of a community of nations and they [governments] have to bear the cost”. “At this rate,” he added, “corporates will come and sit at the negotiating table one day soon.”

Faizi used the term “greenwashing” to describe Coca Cola’s sponsorship.

As countries and companies are expected to do more to combat climate change, they have often responded by making tall promises seldom backed by a strategy to achieve them, policies to shift action in that direction or a meaningful quantum of resources to enable change. These promises are said to be ‘greenwashed’: green in appearance, not in substance.

Faizi said the company tried something similar with the Plachimada bottling plant as well. In 2021, it loaned it to the state government as a COVID-19 treatment centre. The Hindu quoted sources in the government to report that Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages had spent Rs 60 lakh from its CSR funds on the facility.

A request for comment filed via the Coca Cola website and via two members of the group managing Coca Cola’s communications hadn’t elicited a response. This article will be updated as and when The Wire Science receives a reply.

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