Belching Out the Devil
Page 19
Problem number five means that people in the village have no drinking water from the local pumps.
‘People realised that it was because of the plant. The villagers started getting together. The people were involved not just farmers. So in February 2003 we started this agitation.’
Kuriji and others visited other villages in the five-kilometre radius of the plant, organising and campaigning, urging people to agitate. They did everything they could from demonstrating to writing to the state government of Rajasthan and members of the legislative assembly. ‘Through this agitation we are trying to tell the government that the plant has used up all the water and there is a shortage and want the plant to shut down, so we can have sufficient water.’
As the agitation got under way Kuriji found himself approached by Coca-Cola. According to him they had asked, ‘Why are you wasting your energy in this, you support us, we’ll do a lot of good work if we’re together.’ I put it to him that this was a sign that the company wanted to work with its critics but Kuriji disagrees: ‘they asked me whether I need a hand pump or a tube well, I told them I already have a tube well, why do I need you to make me a tube well?’
‘When the Coca-Cola people came to you offering to install a new hand pump or tube well did they saying anything about stopping the struggle or supporting them?’
‘Yes, that was the main thing that they talked about.’
The term Kuriji gave to describe Coke’s offer to him was ‘manage’: Coca-Cola wanted to ‘manage’ him. He was not the first that the company sought to ‘manage’ either. A close relative of one of the campaigners was suddenly offered a job working at the plant, and that particular campaigner dropped out of the agitation.
The leader of the Panchayat (village council) was a slightly more spectacular turncoat, according to Kuriji and the agitation organisers. He had taken an oath in front of them vowing to fight Coke, ‘He took some water in his hand and promised he would remove the plant from the village. He said that if he became the Sarpanch [leader of the village council] of this village, he would support us and try to do his best to remove the plant, and then what happened? He became the Sarpanch and within fifteen days he changed completely.’
Coca-Cola uses letters from the Sarpanch on their website to indicate the level of support they have within the Kaladera community.
Out by the grove, with the music and speeches of the conference wafting in the background, we chat for a hour or so. About how the police create a three-kilometre exclusion zone around the plant on demonstration days, about local politicians politicking and the shenanigans of local skullduggery but mainly about Kuriji’s farm.
‘If you come to Kaladera I will show you.’
‘Thank you, that would be great.’ I say.
‘I will even show you the empty land in my farm.’
‘Fantastic,’ I say, hoping the language of raised eyebrows is not international.
It is not often that I get invited to someone’s home to see an empty field. I suspect that the invitation is just an excuse, he wants to get me to the farm and then he’ll do what all the farmers do around here: show me his empty well.
Four days later Kuriji leads us through Kaladera, a village by Indian standards but with a population of 12,000 to 13,000 people it would constitute a small town in the UK. This is a farmer’s village to be sure, every other stall is piled with fruit and veg and every other shop sells sickles, similar to the old Soviet flag-style ones but much straighter. One trader has theirs laid out on a table next to the hair grips, and I envisage a shopper holding up some rupees tonelessly saying, ‘Just the sickle and the hair grips, thanks love.’ Here the cattle seem to aimlessly lollop down the roads, their hides as parched as their soft bellows, lethargic and thin they have more ribs on show than London Fashion Week.
In the centre of the village cool narrow alleyways bustle with shoppers and traders, where the milk-sweet sellers pick pieces of barfi from stacks piled on trays and hot fresh pastries are scooped out of pans of bubbling oil. Chai sellers and pan wallahs line the outskirts of these pathways where men sit spinning an eternity out of a tiny cup.
Kuriji chivvies us along, worried we are late. He looks old and smart today in his white pressed shirt and grey slacks. We arrive at a white building that looks like a small fort complete with mini battlements, the kind of place the Oompa Loompas might billet in times of war.
‘Come. They are waiting.’ Kuriji points to the door, clutching his ever-present notebook. The entrance is a shaded archway beyond which lies a small courtyard, partially covered with a low awning of metal sheets, propped up in the middle by a single pole. This is the local primary school, and the rug laid in the shadow of the awning is where the children sit for lessons, taught out in the open and out of the sun. Classroom charts and pictures are pinned to the back wall next to a blackboard with spellings hand written in Hindi and English and an adult-size bench sits at the front. Today the school doubles as a meeting place for the village resistance to the Coke bottling plant and twenty farmers sit waiting patiently on the large rug as we arrive. The farmers greet us with smiles and deference to Kuriji. These men form the Committee for Struggle, which is exactly what it is - a committee engaged in a struggle; an entity that marries India’s twin loves of social movements and bureaucracy.
After tea, Kuriji sits to one side of the assembled group, notebook at the ready. It is not merely for my benefit that the men are gathered here, there is to be a planning meeting after I have chatted to them. In the meantime one of the farmers decides that the best introduction to the assembled group is a story, which he proceeds to tell. Kaladera has just celebrated Holi the festival of colour, where people mark the occasion by painting each other with coloured water. It is, I am told, advisable to wear old clothes around festival time as no one is immune and the administering can range from a polite face smearing, to throwing coloured water to using super soakers full of paint. The bolder and brighter the colours the better: reds, purples, greens, all collide leaving an end result that can be a tad LSD. With this in mind the farmer begins, ‘We had a programme called Holi Milan here in Kaladera,’ explaining this is traditionally a party where grudges and ill will are set aside. ‘And for this Holi Milan, all the people contributed some money. We made arrangements for food and drinks for everyone. The manager of Coca-Cola, he was also there. Since it was open, anyone could come.’ He pauses and looks around the gathering in the courtyard. They smile knowingly, already anticipating the punchline. ‘The villagers thought that everyone would contribute, have some good food and have a nice get together... but the villagers had a problem. The villagers’ biggest enemy had come to be a part of their celebrations. Everyone was furious.’ What were they to do? They couldn’t ask the Coca-Cola manager to leave as it would be impolite but he was spoiling the party by being there. So as it was Holi ‘one of the oldest members of the committee he took some photocopying ink in his hands and applied it on the manager’s face. He blackened his face.’ Amidst the bright colours of Holi the Coke manager stood covered in jet-black ink and left shortly after that. The farmer telling the story pauses, looks around at his friends and then to me before saying, ‘There has been a lot of tension since then.’
This story is carving its way into village memory already, everyone seems to know it and have probably told it themselves. And the farmers smile, happy to hear the tale told once again. Its ending is my cue to ask the question I have asked in countries halfway around the world: ‘What was it like before Coca-Cola came?’
Mukut Yogi, squats leaning against a side wall half, he’s thirty-six, with a pink shirt, a neat side parting and a moustache.
‘We were all self-sufficient in those days,’ says Mukut.
And when Coke came?
‘It was only when the water level fell, that we realised what was going on.’
His younger brother Mahesh, shakes his head ruefully, ‘You could never imagine the speed at which the water level fell.’
The farmers don’t have an exact measurement for the water loss (amongst other factors the water level varies with the seasons) but they do know they have to dig their wells deeper and get stronger pumps to bring the water up. You don’t need a tape measure to know the well is dry.
Everyone acknowledges the water situation here is bad, and it depends on who you are as to how you describe it: Coke call it ‘a highly water-stressed area’, the farmers call it a crisis. Water is being drawn out of the ground at a rate that is at least 35 per cent greater than what is being recharged by rainfall.7 It’s a Doomsday scenario.The impact has left farmers unable to grow their crops as they once did and leaves them fearful for their futures.
‘People are unemployed now,’ says Mukut
‘Financial condition has worsened,’ his brother adds.
Crossed-legged and leaning forward Mukut calmly explains, ‘People from this village now go to other cities in search of work. There is no water here. A person cannot do farming. He has to look after his children. What will he do? Many villagers have gone to the cities.’
Few would argue that Coke is solely to blame. And Coke is right when it says ‘agriculture remains the most significant use of water in the watershed’.8 But by agriculture they mean the men sitting in front of me, the small farmers and their families. Here between 60-80 per cent of the population lives on the land, so by agriculture the Company means Indians growing food. Not surprisingly, when I put the Company’s statement to them the agitators get very agitated. At the front of the group is Sudher Prahash, the thirty-year-old teacher at the school and a farmer with just under a hectare of land. Sitting on his haunches and with the eager disposition of a pupil he nearly leaves the ground in outrage at Coke’s suggestion. ‘I can explain this in a minute. In every man’s life, there are a few basic necessities like eating food. What will the people of this country eat? If the farmers consume water, it’s for growing crops. It is for sustaining life. But what are these people doing? You will neither live nor die by drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola.’
Perhaps the most surprising criticism has come Coke’s own report. The TERI report, published in January 2008, does something quite incredible, Coca-Cola’s own report suggests that Coke should consider shutting the plant down!
It is not often a company like Coke hires a consultant tasked with giving them the once over and the consultant says ‘you’re so shit you should think of shutting’ - though the report didn’t actually use these exact words.
The report examines the Coke plant’s activities saying, ‘the water withdrawals by the HCCBPL [Coke], Kaladera, need to be viewed in the context of the already overexploited condition of the aquifer.’ The impact of the Coke plant on the water is such that TERI say ‘the plant’s operations in this area would continue to be one of the contributors to a worsening water situation and a source of stress to the communities around.’ To this end TERI concludes:
‘TCCC has to evaluate its options for HCCBPL, Kaladera, such as: • Transport water from the nearest aquifer that may not be stressed (could be at quite a distance from the existing plant)
• Store water from low-stress seasons (may not exist!)
• Relocate the plant to a water-surplus area
• Shut down this facility.’9
Please note the whole of that statement is in quotation marks…
So let’s look at the options. As Jaipur is a drought-prone area the chances of an nearest aquifer under no stress and with a population willing to let Coke grab is about as slim as the chances of storing enough water without rainfall. Thus eliminating the first two options. Leaving option three ‘Relocate the plant to a water-surplus area.’ Or take option four, ‘shut down this facility.’ The only viable options the plant has is to: shut down and move or shut down and not move. The company chose to continue its operations in Kaladera. Referring to the TERI report, Deepak Jolly the company Vice President said, ‘It doesn’t blame us even once,’ adding ‘It blames the farmers and agriculture.’ In fact Mr Deepak Jolly goes on to say, ‘It also does not even once suggest that we should pack up and leave those areas. It says that there are four or five options for bring up the water levels and if nothing is possible then alone we should go. Anything but closure.’10 Deepak Jolly is also the holder Public Relations Council of India’s 2006 award for Communicator of the Year.11
In the school that looks like a fort the farmers prepare for battle, sitting on the rug and planning how to persuade one of the biggest multinationals in the world to take option three or four. It is time for my questions to end and the meeting to start. Speaking nineteen to the dozen in Hindi, Kuriji explains the TERI report and its significance, that Kaladera’s case was so strong the report couldn’t help but condemn the current running of the plant. His audience listens rapt as Kuriji sits upright on his knees, notepad in hand resting on his lap. Sudher the teacher is still at the front, keen-eyed and coiled. Mukut leans against the wall with his brother next to him.
In the Land of Ignorance my knowledge of Hindi is infinite, in reality it is nil, all I know is that Kuriji has lowered his voice in dramatic significance when my mobile phone rings. My body assumes the ‘oops’ position as I reach hurriedly for it. With my hand cupped over the mouthpiece I whisper ‘Hello?’
A friend from home wants to know if I can come to a party.
‘I’m in India,’ I hiss.
‘Oh sorry, is it Coca-Cola?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, you poor thing it must be horrible for you.’
Speaking as a person who has said so many stupid and inept things in my life that I stand a good chance of being elected Mayor of London, I like to think my friend said that out of surprise and shock. But instead of uttering the hissed mantra of the inappropriate phone interruption, ‘Call you back later, bye’, I impulsively reply, ‘I am in the middle of a meeting of farmers who are plotting how to take on one of the biggest multinationals in the world - it’s not horrid at all, it’s brilliant. Call you back later, bye.’a
Guiltily I lift my head, pocketing the offending technology. No one has noticed my blathering, they are listening as Kuriji finishes with a flourish. They nod emphatically and murmuring breaks out. I edge over and ask one of the crowd, ‘What did he just say?’
‘He said “Are you ready to agitate?”’
Kuriji’s son Mahendra jumps from his cot where a second before he had lain unaware of the impending visitors. Patting down his hair he hurries into the house and emerges moments later with a jug of water and a low bow. The first thing a farmer does when guests arrive is offer water - the second thing he does is show them the well. Groups gather around it, peer into darkness, point to old tidemarks on the wall and tut. In good years a farmer might have shown a guest his cattle or full crops, but these are dry years, so everyone comes to the well with a quiet lamentation, to plead, curse, and sigh. Farmers show their wells like bruises, as evidence of injury.
‘Here,’ says Kuriji gesticulating with an outstretched arm. Mere metres from of his home lies the dry and dead well. The top courses its brickwork have been exposed to the elements and are blown and puffy with erosion. ‘Initially it was thirty feet deep. So where the pigeons are sitting, that was the depth of the well.’
Leaning precariously, holding the top of a metal ladder that descends into the well, I can see a circular shelf of concrete that is home to the birds; four nesting pigeons who inhabit the ledge, cooing in the shade amidst the caked bird crap and feathers.
‘That was the depth of the well, dug in 1990,’ says Kuriji enunciating the numbers so there is no confusion. From where the pigeons sit another smaller hole drops into total darkness, this was the second well,
that went down to 80 feet.
‘Dried. Dried.’ he says, with a tilt of his head. ‘I have this tube well after this,’ he points to a couple of pipes that run across his yard to a metal cylinder which houses the pump. This tube well was dug in 2002 and goes down to 205 feet. That is the depth he brings the water up from.
‘It cost me 1 lakh rupees.’ Which is about £1,200. And as if this were not indignity enough, he can use the pump for only a few hours a day. The state decided to allow farmers four hours of electricity every twenty-four hours thus limiting the amount of water they can bring up. A decision that has caused considerable bitterness as the bottlers are not subject to the same measures. Coke can pull up water when it likes.
We walk along the side of a barley field that is home to a small temple, a stone affair with a peaked roof barely a metre in height. This is a temple to Hanuman, the monkey god who owns and protects the well. Not a task the primate god has excelled at in this instance. Before us is a large field that remains unplanted, the promised empty field. It is stark in its absence of plant life, it is a large patch of tilled earth. Where the blackish trunks of the trees are set out against the insipid brown of the earth. Kuriji speaking in English explains slowly, ‘Out of seven hectares two fallow.’