Sunil Jain: Citizen Narain

BACKSTAGE

Life's been quite a whirl for Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) Director Sunita Narain ever since she unveiled CSE's second set of tests that showed the country's soft drinks industry hadn't improved its act over the past three years with the pesticide residue remaining unchecked. There've been the usual round of television interviews, insinuations about her source of funds and even competence "" a leading editor asked how an illiterate like her was competent to pronounce judgement on the presence of pesticide residues in various bottled soft drinks/colas. Narain shrugged the insinuation off, preferring to let her laboratory tests do the talking for her, but there's no doubt that the high-school graduate who armed herself with a bachelor's pass course degree through correspondence later, has come a long way since.

Starting off with the Vikram Sarabhai Institute for Development Interaction in 1979, followed by a brief stint with the Bombay Natural History Society, Narain met CSE chief Anil Agarwal in January 1981 to work, as a volunteer, on the centre's first citizen report on the state of India's environment. In 1982, she joined as a full-time staffer with a princely salary of Rs 650, and two years later, worked on the second citizen's report. Till 2002, when Agarwal succumbed to lymphoma, Narain was very much in the shadows, and no one gave CSE a chance when she took over. It was only three years ago, when the first report on the presence of pesticides in various colas/soft drinks was published, that Narain was back in the reckoning. For the first time in their history, the cola giants held a joint press conference, the drinks were banned in Parliament, a Joint Parliamentary Committee was set up on the issue and the Bureau of Indian Standards was asked to fix standards for soft drinks.

This time around, though, the impact seems muted with the cola giants just issuing one press statement through a lobby body and the political class issuing a few wishy-washy statements on it. To top it all, the food safety bill that Narain was crusading against, and lobbying Parliament's standing committee on, went against her as well, with Parliament passing a bill that makes life easier for those found violating food standards.

So, has the CSE been defanged with its last big victory, the one against diesel which resulted in tighter pollution standards and the introduction of CNG in places like Delhi, actually crafted by the late Agarwal? Narain agrees she's losing right now, but says the fact that people are framing the argument on the issues the CSE is talking about is a huge positive. "A few years ago, rainwater harvesting was seen as a fringe area, today even the prime minister is talking about its importance", she says.

Does this suggest a change of tactics, perhaps tying up with global NGOs (along the lines of the pro-animal rights PETA) to embarrass cola MNCs in their home countries? After all, the campaign against sweatshops has really been fought, and won, only in the West. Narain disagrees and says there could be some similarity of views occasionally but by and large the positions are poles apart which is why CSE has fought global NGOs as well. "We're losing right now", she says with determination, "but we're not fighting a losing battle."

With inputs from Bipin Chandran