by Sandeep Pandey
The struggle against Coca Cola plant in Mehdiganj, District Varanasi in India has been going on for over a decade now. In 2003 for the first time about 500 farmers staged a demonstration at the gate of the plant. There was police lathi charge by bamboo batons and Coca Cola security guards used iron rods to beat the activists. Over sixty people went to jail. In 2004 there was a bigger demonstration with about 2000 farmers coming out to face police this time. However, this time activists were not allowed to approach the plant gate. There was a court order preventing people to be in the vicinity of plant. Again there was a police lathi charge and this time close to a hundred and sixty people went to jail.
Later it was discovered that the court order prevented only 13 people from being within 300 metres of the plant, which included Nandlal, the leader of the movement and myself. Hence in future demonstrations we told the police to allow remaining villagers and activists to go up to the plant gate. However, they were always stopped on the other side of the Varanasi-Allahabad highway on which the plant is located.
The plant was shut down by an order of UP Pollution Control Board on 6 June, 2014, as it was found guilty of drawing more water from under the ground than it was permitted. It had sought permission to increase its capacity by five times. Coca Cola was also showing the same amount of sludge generated even though its capacity had gone up. Coca Cola went to Green Tribunal and got a relief as Central Ground Water Authority had not taken a decision on Coca Cola’s request to increase its capacity. Meanwhile, UP government had declared the area as ‘critical’ from the point of view of ground water table. The case is going on in Green Tribunal.
On 15th January, 2015, about a hundred students of Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University and members of a vendors’ organisation Gumti Vyavasaee Kalyan Samiti took out a bicycle rally from the University main gate to the plant, 15 km away. Villagers joined the rally midway.
For the first time in 12 years the police did not stop the protestors from approaching the main gate. The press also covered the event, unlike on previous occasions when it chose to just mention the protest against ‘a soft drink manufacturer’ without taking the name of Coca Cola or giving details of issues involved.
Recently the local revenue authorities had slapped a fine of Rs. 2,55,000 for cheating on stamp duty when purchasing additional land and forced unwilling Coca Cola to pay a third of the amount, Rs. 85,000 on 31 December, 2014. When Coca Cola had purchased the land from a local manufacturer in the beginning it had cheated to the extent of Rs. 3,01,50,000. It has paid only one third of this amount too so far. It is inexplicable that a multinational corporation which spends crores on advertisement campaigns doesn’t have money to pay its fines.
