While a Kerala government committee has said that the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada in Palakkad district caused Rs 216 crore of damage to the environment before it shut down in 2004, the company has categorically denied this. It has argued that it was never asked to give evidence before the committee, that there was no scientific evidence and so on — in other words, as and when the state government decides to levy a fine on the company, the case is sure to head for the courts, perhaps to join the original case involving the very same Coca-Cola plant that is in the Supreme Court. In this case, when the matter went to the Kerala High Court, the single-judge bench ruled in favour of the panchayat which wanted the plant closed since, the panchayat had argued, it was reducing the availability of water and the effluents released by the plant were polluting the nearby areas. Coca-Cola challenged this decision before a division bench which, after a committee appointed by it submitted its report, ruled that Coca-Cola could draw up to 5 lakh litres of water a day except when the monsoon was below normal. The Centre for Science and Environment, which claimed Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks had pesticide residues, in turn, challenged this committee’s report, arguing it had seriously overestimated the region’s recharging capacity and hence its 5-lakh-litre figure was excessive. All of which proves that proving culpability of Coca-Cola is not going to be an easy task.
What can be said with a lot more certitude, and this applies to Pepsi which has also been asked by the government in Kerala to cut its consumption of water (by as much as 60 per cent), is that India desperately needs a groundwater usage policy. Right now, thanks to the fact that there is no law on the subject, the owner/lessee of land is free to use as much groundwater as she pleases — so Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and indeed any other user, pay just a nominal fee for the water they use. Till 2004, Coca-Cola used around 4 litres of water for every litre of Coca-Cola it produced, and this is now down to around 3.3 litres. But the company pays just 30-40 paise per 1,000 litres of groundwater by way of a cess to the state pollution control board — to pay for the treatment of the effluents it creates. At around 3.3 litres of water per a litre of cola, that’s just one paisa for every 10 litres of cola sold in the market. While Coca-Cola and Pepsi doing this grabs the headlines, especially given the comparison in the costs of the water and the cola that’s sold by them, this applies to all industrial firms. Some years ago, the government had moved on legislation that required industry to pay realistic prices for the groundwater it used, but this never moved forward beyond a point. While the government looks into the claims and counterclaims on pollution, it is time to revive that piece of legislation.