The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
February 22nd 2007
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Coca-Cola Plant Shut Down by Agrarian Fanatics:Delicious Beverage Under Assault
Studies indicate Coca-Cola is a harmless carbonated beverage enjoyed daily by hundreds of millions of humans around the planet. It could be suggested the global reach of the delightful fizzy drink is testimony to its excellent quality and competitive price relative to other carbonated refreshments. But for many, the drink is instead a symbol of all things nefarious and fucked up about the world - a poisonous, gut-rending concoction inimicable to the human physiology and an ever-present, inescapable reminder of a conquered and still-colonised world.
In recent years, the assault on the multinational corporation Coca Cola-Amatil from anarchic counter-cultural fanatics has intensified. A convenient straw man has been concocted by a vicious anti-corporate movement intent on tearing down the proudest bastions of Western tradition, and carelessly treading the good name of the West and its cluster of wealthy enlightened liberal capitalist neo-democratic societies into the global mud.
Of course, the truth is, it's all very easy to take a huge, benevolent corporation like CocaCola-Amatil to task for its use of cheap third-world labour, short-cuts on environmental regulations prevailing in former colonial back-waters, the necessary commandeering and dominance of water supplies in the vicinity of its massive production plants, or for the global drive to replace water with diabetes-inducing sugar-filled carbonated beverages as the preferred drink of choice for the world's population from cradle to grave.
However, what many thoughtless naysayers fail to recognise that their careless (and sometimes defamatory) criticisms, while accurate in a technical linguistic or sociological sense, do not take account of the larger picture. In fact, Coca Cola begrudgingly has little option in a few isolated instances but to compromise its highest standards in the short term. And while detractors would argue greed is the primary motivation for the compromises that sometimes results in awkward home and work situations for employees in less well off countries, in fact the opposite is far nearer to the truth.
PLACHIMADA
Despite bringing employment and industry to many poorer regions of the world Coca Cola is now under increasing threat from an intransigent and ungrateful third world population. The situation faced at Coca-Cola's single largest bottling plant in India - in Plachimada, Kerala is a case in point.
On January 15th in 2005 about a thousand demonstrators beset the plant some months after community protest suspended Coca Cola's operations there. Community advocates complained Coca Cola was guilty of creating severe water shortages in the region as a direct result of its practice of pumping groundwater to manufacture supply for the Southeast Asian region. In the Kerala region, it was claimed, Coke has already lowered the water table in the area to the extent that farmers can no longer access water. Bores have run dry.
Coca-Cola's Indian operations have already come under scrutiny after it was discovered last year that Indian farmers were spraying crops with Coke, since the fizzy refreshment was considered effective as a pesticide. Coca Cola has recorded great loses recently after it was revealed in the media that its local product contained enough Monsanto poison that the drink itself could be used as a pesticide.
This difficult public relations issue has been compounded by the international spotlight brought to bear on Plachimada by irritatingly effective Indian environmental campaigners who say Coke's disregard for the people of Kerala has been exacerbated with the polluting of diminished local water-ways with the unpleasant sludge that is the bi-product of Coke production. Local authorities everywhere are prone to losing their pliability when world attention is on them. In October 2005 a Kerala court ruled Coke could not re-open the Plachimada plant due to flagrant exceedences of toxic emissions limits. Late in January of this year, with the demonstrators still camped outside the manufacturing facility, Coca Cola agreed that it would cease operations there if they did not have the community's support.
A petulant spokesman says the company can little afford further bad press.He threatened Coca-Cola may simply ignore India in future unless it is better treated by regulators and local judicial upstarts.
The threat well suits environmentalists, who would be happy to see Coca-Cola executives forced to eat the materials from dismantled manufacturing and bottling plants from all around the world, before being blind-folded, made to kneel, and shot. "We will make it increasingly difficult for Coca-Cola to do business in the US and EU, as well as in emerging markets, such as Brazil, until it cleans up its act in India," said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center, a bi-national (US-India) group that campaigns internationally to hold Coca-Cola accountable.
ENLIVENING
It's so easy to forget. For we elites in Australia and a few other lucky countries it is hard to conceive of a time or place where the enlivening brown beverage Coke is not available. Whether we are at home, at work, shopping, or socialising, Coca Cola is available almost anywhere, within, say, five minutes. According to an anecdotal report, Westerners were some time ago offered a can of coke by a small entreprenurial child carrying several of the things through the hills of northern Vietnam. Another eyewitness report from the mid 1980s tells of a shop in a region of New Guinea irregularly frequented by Westerners where the only items of merchandise available are fishing line, tinned fish, and Coca Cola.
And yet for some in outlying remote areas of the world, such as West Papua and the frost-bitten villages of the Russian steppe, Coke is still - even in the twenty-first century - unavailable. In other areas, it is priced too highly for the poorest to afford - imagine: despite proximity to Coca Cola, the dark elixir that is the ubiquitous symbol of Western excess, these unfortunates are unable ever to lift an ice-chilled glass of the fizzy drink to their lips, concerned instead with providing families with simpler necessities of life.
In order to make Coca Cola truly democratic - the ultimate dream of the corporation's executives, and those already drinking the refreshing beverage - some compromise is necessary in some areas. But the planet's less fortunate can rest assured: in future, when Coke is available to all the world's population without exception, attention will turn with haste and aplomb to the few short-comings arising from the completion of this grand global project.
Related articles elsewhere
How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada
Coca Cola moving out of Plachimada?
Kerala pollution board orders Coke plant to close
