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Home--News
Coca-Cola: Only a Model for Good PR
Amit Srivastava
Guest Opinion
Economic Times
March 28, 2008
The Coca-Cola company and its CEO, Mr Neville Isdell, must be congratulated
for some excellent public relations work lately, and in particular,
in India. Neville Isdell was the “guest editor” of ET (March 17, 2008)
and he used the platform to pull off a wonderful public relations
coup - create an image of itself that it clearly is not.
In his edit ‘A new model of sustainability’, Mr Isdell writes that
we must view business from a “broader context” and that if the communities
are not sustainable, then the business is not sustainable. We must
agree. But Coca-Cola is the least qualified company to talk about
new ways of operating and building sustainable communities, given
its track record in India.
Not once in the entire issue, which also included a lengthy section
on corporate social responsibility, did the crisis that Coca-Cola
creates and faces in India find mention. We feel it is time to set
the record straight and away from the spin of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola’s bottling plants in India are the target of many community-led
campaigns, accusing the company of worsening water shortages in areas
where it operates and polluting the scarce remaining water and soil.
In a very high profile case, one of Coca-Cola’s largest bottling plants
in India, in Plachimada, Kerala, has been shut down since March 2004
because government and independent agencies have confirmed that the
bottling plant has polluted the water and soil in the area.
Coca-Cola, in the past, has rejected the campaigns against it in India
as being not based on facts and the agenda of anti-globalisation activists.
But the momentum has turned against Coca-Cola, as various government
and independent studies confirm what the communities who live around
the bottling plants have been saying all along -that the company is
responsible for exacerbating water crises and pollution.
In what must have been a shocker for Coca-Cola, a study that it paid
for (and conducted by TERI) released earlier this year was a scathing
indictment of the company’s operations in India. The company was forced
to agree to an assessment of its operations in India, a result of
a sustained international campaign to hold Coca-Cola accountable.
Not surprisingly, the study found no mention in Mr Isdell’s edition.
Coca-Cola’s own study has recommended that it shut down its bottling
plant in Kala Dera in Rajasthan. The study found that 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.”
Noting that Coca-Cola has not respected the rights of farmers and
groundwater conditions, the study also warned Coca-Cola about declining
water conditions around another campaign hotspot - Mehdiganj in Uttar
Pradesh. Bolstered by the study, the community of Mehdiganj will be
holding a demonstration against the bottling plant later this month.
The study by TERI also found that in the plants assessed, not one
plant had met the Coca-Cola company’s own wastewater treatment standards.
What is the point of having your own standards, we ask, if you don’t
meet them? And the study found an alarming incidence of pollution
in the immediate vicinity of Coca-Cola’s bottling plants.
The assessment, which covered only six plants (out of fifty) is very
clear that the Coca-Cola company has located its bottling plants in
India from strictly a “business continuity” perspective that has not
taken the wider context into perspective.
So where is the placing of the business in a “broader context” that
the Coca-Cola CEO talked about in his edit? Surely not in India. And
sustainable communities? Coca-Cola’s own study has confirmed that
the company is responsible for exacerbating water crises, and recommended
the shutdown of one of its bottling plants. Coca-Cola has not respected
the rights of farmers, and has exploited the groundwater to such an
extent in some areas that thousands of farmers have lost their livelihoods.
The Coca-Cola company did not even bother to share the environmental
impact assessments (that it should have conducted prior to locating
its bottling plants across India) for the study after repeated requests.
Coca-Cola cited legal and confidential reasons for not sharing the
reports.
The environmental impact assessments look at the various factors including
water availability, existing stresses on water and potential impacts
on the community. The fact is that the Coca-Cola company has located
many of its bottling plants in India strictly from a business and
profit motivated principle, and has given scant, if any, attention
to the impacts on the community. Such a company cannot and must not
be allowed to talk about new models of sustainability. Coca-Cola must
walk the walk before it can talk the talk.
(The author is the director of India Resource Center, an international
campaigning organisation based in San Francisco, USA)
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