Message in a Bottle

Plachimada, Kerala

Whizzing along the road in the little Tata Indica, driven prestissimo by the imperturbable Sudhi, we crossed the state line from Tamil Nadu into Kerala, branched off the main road and ended up in the settlement of Plachimada, mostly inhabited by extremely poor people. There on one side of the street was the Coca-Cola plant, among the company's largest in Asia, and on the other a shack filled with locals eager to impart the news that they were now, as of April 2, in Day 1,076 of their struggle against the plant.

Coca-Cola came to India in 1993, looking for water and markets in a country where 170 million people have no access to drinking water, with shortages growing daily. The bloom was on neoliberalism back then, with central and state authorities falling over themselves to lease, sell or simply hand over India's assets to multinationals in the name of economic "reform."

Coca-Cola had sound reasons for coming to Plachimada, which has large underground water deposits. The site Coca-Cola picked is between two large reservoirs and ten yards south of an irrigation canal. Coke's plot is surrounded by colonies inhabited by several hundred poor people with an average holding of four-tenths of an acre. Virtually the sole source of employment is wage labor, usually for no more than 100 to 120 days in the year.

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