coca cola plachimada case study ppt

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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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BUSINESS ETHICS: A CASE STUDY ON VIOLATION OF BUSINESS ETHICS BY COCA COLA COMPANY IN PLACHIMADA

This is a case study on the violation of ethics by the Coca Cola company in the Plachimada village of Kerala and how the villagers were affected.

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