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If “Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola” Then “Cold Drink Means Toilet Cleaner”: Environmentalism of the Dispossessed in Liberalizing India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2012

Amanda Ciafone
Amanda Ciafone
Affiliation:
Macalester College
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Abstract

With the sudden, almost ubiquitous reentry of The Coca-Cola Company to India during economic liberalization, the branded commodity became a sign of both aspirational global consumer-citizenship for India's urban middle class and of corporate enclosure for those dispossessed of material and symbolic resources to fuel this consumption. Village communities around several of Coca-Cola's rural plants, including in Mehdiganj, Uttar Pradesh, organized against the company's operations, which they accused of exploiting and polluting common groundwater in the production of bottled drinks as an increasing expanse of the country fell into a crisis of water scarcity. This “environmentalism of the poor” has articulated a powerful critique of corporate globalization and privatization, illuminating the exploitation of the resources of the rural poor for the consumption of those on the other side of an increasingly widening economic divide.

Type
Labor and Global Commodities
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 81 , Spring 2012 , pp. 114 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2012

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References

NOTES

I would like to thank the blind reviewer and the guest editors of this issue of International Labor and Working Class History, Mae Ngai and Molly Nolan, for their feedback and support. Thank you also to Raghvendra Upadhyay, Sridevi Shivarajan, Sujani Reddy, Miabi Chatterji, Rachel Wistuff, and the members of the Globalization and Culture Working Group at Yale University for their assistance in the research and writing of this article, and to the employees, residents, and activists who shared their knowledge, perspectives, and experiences with me.

1. “Coca-Cola Is Back in India,” The Coca-Cola Company News Release, October 24, 1993.

2. Jennifer Kaye and Paul A. Argenti, “Coca-Cola India,” Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (2004), 2–3. According to Kaye and Argenti, The Coca-Cola Company's sales growth in the United States slowed from 5–7% annually in the 1980s to only 0.2% through the 1990s.

3. This essay draws on fieldwork in Mehdiganj, including over 60 interviews as well as additional interviews with villagers and activists of Kala Dera, Rajasthan and Plachimada, Kerala. The history of the movement in Plachimada has been well-documented; see Ananthakrishnan Aiyer on the context of the larger agrarian crisis; CR Bijoy on the role of Adivasis in the struggle; K Ravi Raman and Sujith Koonan on legal implications of the court case against Coca-Cola; K.R. Ranjith and P.R. Sreemahadevan Pilla for popular and technical studies; business case studies from Terry Halbert and Sridevi Shivarajan (with whom I collaborated on several interviews in Kerala); and, of course, the activist literature including Anti-Coca-Cola Peoples Struggle Committee, Coca-Cola Quit Plachimada, Quit India: The Story of Anti-Coca-Cola Struggle at Plachimada in Kerala (Keralam, 2004)Google Scholar.

4. This idea of a Coca-Cola world system is inspired by world systems theory and models of commodity chain analysis applied to cultural as well as material objects of study, as exemplified by Franco Moretti's idea of a “one and unequal” world literary space; a cultural “system” influenced by international political and economic relations but with its own internal logic, valuations, power structure, and geography. Moretti, Franco, “Conjectures on World Literature,” Debating World Literature, Prendergast, Christopher, ed. (London, 2004)Google Scholar and Casanova, Pascale, “Literature as a World,” New Left Review (January/February, 2005)Google Scholar. On a less theoretical level, The Coca-Cola Company itself refers to its global network of subsidiaries and bottlers as the “Coca-Cola system.”

5. Edward Gargan, “A Revolution Transforms India: Socialism's Out, Free Market In,” The New York Times (March 29, 1992).

6. “Coca-Cola and Parle Join Hands in India,” The Coca-Cola Company News Release, September 21, 1993.

7. Coca-Cola India, “About Us,” http://www.cocacolaindia.com/aboutus/aboutus_ccindia.aspx [accessed 1/2009].

8. Senadhira, Sugeeswara and Dawson, Havis, “Raising India: Coca-Cola Company Re-enters Indian Market,” Beverage World (February 1, 1994)Google Scholar.

9. Blanding, Michael, The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink (New York, 2010), 235Google Scholar.

10. Ambarish Mukherjee, “To deny voting rights to Indian shareholders—Coke knocks at FIPB doors,” The Hindu Business Line (January 30, 2003); P. Balakrishna and B. Sidharth, “MNCs: Not above flouting rules,” The Hindu Business Line (April 9, 2003); “Indian Government Allows Coke to Buy Out Shareholders in Hindustan Coca-Cola,” The Hindu Business Line (November 25, 2005); Blanding, 236.

11. Kaye and Argenti, 4. Coca-Cola India, “About Us.”

12. For more on the bottled water industry in India, see Chandra Bushan, “Bottled Loot,” Frontline 23 (April 8–21, 2006).

13. For more on changes to the advertising strategies of multinationals and efforts to localize products through advertising campaigns, see O'Barr, William, Moreira, Marcio, and Lazarus, Shelly, “Global Advertising,” Advertising & Society Review 9 (2008)Google Scholar and Mazzarella, William, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham, NC, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Boby Kurian, “Coca-Cola May Dump Life ho to aisi Campaign,” The Hindu Business Line (December 19, 2002); Kaye and Argenti, 6.

15. “Thanda Matlab Solitary EFFIE Gold: EFFIE Awards 2003,” Indiantelevision.com, August 22, 2003.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Sumita Vaid Dixit, “‘Thanda III’—Coke Scores on Naturalness,” AgencyFAQs, September 30, 2002.

19. Aamir Khan as a Punjabi farmer in “Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola” television ad in 2003.

20. Dixit, “‘Thanda III’”; “Coca-Cola India's Thirst for the Rural Market,” ICMR Center for Management Research, June 18, 2009.

21. Shailesh Dobhal, “The Real Thing,” Business Today (May 23, 2004); Gouri Shukla, “Prasoon Joshi: The ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ Man,” Business Standard (May 5, 2003).

22. This was true of Plachimada, Kerala, and Kaladera, Rajasthan, where new plants were built; the Mehdiganj, Uttar Pradesh, plant was a brownfield acquisition by Coca-Cola subsidiary Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd. of Kejriwal Beverages Pvt. Ltd., a Parle franchisee bottling plant.

23. Anthropologist Ananthakrishnan Aiyer argues that the struggles against Coca-Cola should be interpreted in the context of the larger “agrarian crisis” in “The Allure of the Transnational: Notes on Some Aspects of the Political Economy of Water in India,” Cultural Anthropology 22 (2007)Google Scholar.

24. See Vedwan, Neeraj, “Pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi: Consumerism, Brand Image, and Public Interest in a Globalizing India,” Cultural Anthropology 22 (2007), 661–662CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Ibid.

26. Aiyer, “Allure of the Transnational,” 650–651.

27. Sunil Kumar, “Note on Farm Sector in Uttar Pradesh,” Department of Planning, Government of Uttar Pradesh (October, 2005), 5. The average size of landholding for 90% of small and marginal farmers is about 0.55 hectares or 1.36 acres, and 89.35 million farmer households were reported to be indebted nationally.

28. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Independent Third Party Assessment of Coca-Cola Facilities in India (2008), 205.

29. Chandrika, R, To Protect Our Right Over Our Water, Lok Samiti, 2006, 5–6Google Scholar.

30. TERI, 206. Average daily intake for a plant is around 600,000 liters, but the plants have withdrawn as much as 1.5 million liters a day during the summer months.

31. The Easement Act of 1882 as discussed in Ibid., 90.

32. Ibid., 220. A few states had instituted water policies of their own prior to this National Water Policy, for example, Uttar Pradesh in 1999.

33. Ibid., 6.

34. The Mehdiganj plant pays the gram panchayat Rs 6000 ($136.36) in annual taxes and Rs 2500 ($56.82) in license to operate fees. Ibid., 222.

35. For all the water it withdrew in Mehdiganj during 2005–2006, the plant paid a water cess of just Rs. 31,573.00 or $717.57, with an average exchange rate of around Rs. 44.00/1 dollar in 2005–2006. Ibid., 223.

36. Interview with author, Mehdiganj, India, April 2, 2008.

37. Chandrika, R, To Protect Our Right Over Our Water, Lok Samiti, 2006Google Scholar.

38. TERI, 216. These sentiments were echoed in several interviews by the author.

39. Struggles over water rights around Coca-Cola plants have taken root in Plachimada in the state of Kerala, Kala Dera, in Rajasthan, Mehdiganj, in Uttar Pradesh, Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, Thane in Maharashtra, and Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu, to name the most visible.

40. The Parle franchise, Kejriwal Beverages Pvt. Limited, was bought by Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Limited in 1999. Several articles on the history and organizing in Mehdiganj can be found on the India Resource Center's website, www.indiaresource.org.

41. Although the issue was “purportedly settled before the acquisition of the property by Coca-Cola … [it] resurfaced subsequently and, as per records, is yet to find a final settlement,” according to the independent review by TERI. TERI, 222. More detail provided through interviews in Shira Wolf's thesis, “Thanda-Hearted Matlab, Coca Cola in India: A Case Study in Mehandiganj Village of Environmental and Community Impact of the Grassroots Movement,” University of Wisconsin, April 15, 2004.

42. Author interviews with plant management. See also Blanding, 230. This labor organizing is all the more remarkable given the informal labor arrangements and underemployment many of the workers experienced as sari weavers and agricultural workers.

43. Wage figures from 2004 as cited in Drew, Georgina, “From the Groundwater Up: Asserting Water Rights in India,” Development, 51 (2008): 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Interview with Siaram Yadav, Mehdiganj, India, April 4, 2008. See also http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2004/cokemehdiganj.html

45. Interview with Ram Narayan Patel, Mehdiganj, India, April 2, 2008.

46. Nandlal Prasad is called Nandlal Master by Mehdiganj residents.

47. Interviews with Nandlal Prasad, Mehdiganj, India, March-April, 2008. For more, see Dana van Breukelen's thesis “Marching in the Spirit of Gandhi: A Case-Study into Gandhian Elements of the Lok Samiti Movement in Mehediganj, India,” Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2006).

48. M. K. Gandhi in conversation with Ramachandran, October 10/11, 1924. http://www.bombaymuseum.org/ahimsa/sec5/swadeshi.html. Interviews with Nandlal Prasad, Mehdiganj, India, March-April, 2008.

49. Interviews, Mehdiganj, Uttar Pradesh, February-May, 2008.

50. Chandrika R, Mehdiganj 15–16. Interviews with Nandlal Prasad, Mehdiganj, India, March-April, 2008.

51. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an early to mid-twentieth century Dalit scholar and political leader who challenged the social discrimination of the caste system.

52. National Alliance of People's Movements, “National Alliance of People's Movements,” (1996). http://www.proxsa.org/politics/napm.html.

53. Ibid. quoted in Christine Keating, “Developmental Democracy and Its Inclusions: Globalization and the Transformation of Participation,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29 (2003): 428Google Scholar.

54. Rajni Bakshi, “‘Development, Not Destruction’: Alternative Politics in the Making,” Economic and Political Weekly, 31, 5, February 3, 1996. Keating, 427–428.

55. NAPM.

56. TERI, 22.

57. Steve Stecklow, “Virtual Battle: How a Global Web of Activists Gives Coke Problems in India,” The Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2005).

58. “About India Resource Center,” http://www.indiaresource.org/about/index.html [accessed November 22, 2009].

59. Derived from the legal terminology of “venue shopping” used by political scientists Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones as cited in Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1998), 18Google Scholar.

60. Keck and Sikkink, 16–25.

61. “Colleges, Universities and High Schools Active in the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke,” http://www.killercoke.org/active-in-campaign.htm.

62. A concept paper sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company outlines ways to legitimize terminology and practices like “water neutrality” and “water offsets.” Winnie Gerbens-Leenes, et al., “Water Neutrality: A Concept Paper,” November 20, 2007.

63. Kaye and Argenti, 6.

64. Sunita Narain at press conference, quoted in Raju Bist, “India's Cola Controversy Widens,” Asia Times (August 8, 2003).

65. For more, see Vedwan, “Pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi.”

66. A phrase from Joan Martínez-Alier used in Ramachandra Guha's, How Much Should a Person Consume?: Environmentalism in India and the United States (Berkeley, 2006), 59Google Scholar. Martínez-Alier, Joan, “Retrospective Environmentalism and Environmental Justice Movements Today,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 11 (June 2000), 45–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. Guha, 57–70. Some of the most prominent Indian examples are the struggles of the Chipko forest dwellers against logging and for rights to land, Keralan fisherfolk's challenge to coastal development and unsustainable fishing methods, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan's movement against the construction of the Narmada Dam and the flooding of 425 villages (an early NAPM mobilization which brought to national and international attention the leader Medha Patkar, who has been a visible part of the anti-Coca-Cola organizing).

68. Guha quoting Indian environmental thinker Anil Agarwal (and CSE founder) in Ibid., 59.

69. Ibid., 70.

70. Ibid., 63.

71. Ibid. C R Neelakandan interview with author, Ernakulam, India, March 21, 2008.

72. Faber, Daniel, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice: The Polluter-Industrial Complex in the Age of Globalization (New York, 2008), 237Google Scholar.

73. Ibid., 236.

74. Ibid., 237.

75. Ibid., 228–231; 236.

76. Ibid., 233.

77. Photograph by author, “Right to Water National Conference and Protest Against Coca-Cola,” Mehdiganj, Uttar Pradesh, March 30, 2008.

78. Lok Samiti, Jahar Ba (circa 2005).

79. “Thanda matlab toilet cleaner” was popularized by television yogi Swami Ramdev who appropriated Coca-Cola's advertising tagline to make it a catchphrase to dissuade his practitioners from consuming soft drinks (as well as fast food, foreign beauty products, etc.) using both health discourse and more exclusionary rhetoric of bodily purity and swadeshi nationalism.