Belching Out the Devil (26 page)

 

However, someone at Coke in India decided it would be a good idea to open a water-intensive industry in a drought prone area. For some reason the word that springs to mind is ‘D'oh!'

The conference in the glade is in full swing. Speakers are in full cry, the crowd cheer appreciatively and if there are any gaps in the programme the local band jumps in to perform protest songs - ripping out the lyrical innards of popular ballads and replacing them with a more suitable polemic. So Kuriji and I look for a quieter place to sit and have a chat. We cross the road and smile at the barber who has set up shop under a telegraph pole, walk through the mango orchard and out on to the fields, coming to rest at the edge of a grove of trees.

Even for a farmer Kuriji is a self-contained man. Balding and grey he is not a large person, either in height or weight, and he carries himself with the gentle gravitas of age. Two ballpoint pens are clipped into the top pocket of his shirt. His family have farmed in Kaladera going back to ‘my great-grandfather's grandfather,' he said. His wife and son ran the family farm when he worked as a civil servant for the state government of Rajasthan. As the assistant director of agriculture, his job was to find ways that farmers could practically apply the latest research into farming methods and would tour farms explaining and helping. On retiring in 2002 he took to working full-time on the farm and in turn agitating. Sitting, he produces a large notebook, this is his journal of Kaladera's struggle for water, detailing each twist and turn in the saga, including each journalist he has ever spoken to on the subject. I suppose you can take a man from the civil service…

 

Kuriji begins with Coca-Cola's arrival, ‘As soon as it started, the water level went down drastically. This is the main problem. Second problem, earlier we used a three-horsepower motor. But immediately after Coke arrived we had to replace it with a five-horsepower motor.'

‘Is this because of Coke?'

‘Yes. The water level went down. We had to dig the wells deeper and to pump water from such depth, five-horsepower motor was needed.'

 

He might well have the civil service knack of itemising the issues, but he has a farmer's concerns. Having listed depleted well water and pumps, he comes to ‘Thirdly, earlier we could irrigate around fourteen-fifteen acres of land with the water available but now the water is sufficient for only ten-twelve
acres of land. The fourth problem is that yield also reduced. Water is required for a good harvest…'

 

It is only after working his way through pumps, yields and irrigation he comes to the fifth and last problem, at the bottom of the priority pile. ‘Fifth problem was that water for the hand pumps dried up. In some parts they have stopped working, have become dry. There is no water.'

 

Problem number five means that people in the village have no drinking water from the local pumps.

 

‘People realised that it was because of the plant. The villagers started getting together. The people were involved not just farmers. So in February 2003 we started this agitation.'

 

Kuriji and others visited other villages in the five-kilometre radius of the plant, organising and campaigning, urging people to agitate. They did everything they could from demonstrating to writing to the state government of Rajasthan and members of the legislative assembly. ‘Through this agitation we are trying to tell the government that the plant has used up all the water and there is a shortage and want the plant to shut down, so we can have sufficient water.'

 

As the agitation got under way Kuriji found himself approached by Coca-Cola. According to him they had asked, ‘Why are you wasting your energy in this, you support us, we'll do a lot of good work if we're together.' I put it to him that this was a sign that the company wanted to work with its critics but Kuriji disagrees: ‘they asked me whether I need a hand pump or a tube well, I told them I already have a tube well, why do I need you to make me a tube well?'

‘When the Coca-Cola people came to you offering to install a new hand pump or tube well did they saying anything about stopping the struggle or supporting them?'

‘Yes, that was the main thing that they talked about.'

 

The term Kuriji gave to describe Coke's offer to him was ‘manage': Coca-Cola wanted to ‘manage' him. He was not the first that the company sought to ‘manage' either. A close relative of one of the campaigners was suddenly offered a job working at the plant, and that particular campaigner dropped out of the agitation.

 

The leader of the Panchayat (village council) was a slightly more spectacular turncoat, according to Kuriji and the agitation organisers. He had taken an oath in front of them vowing to fight Coke, ‘He took some water in his hand and promised he would remove the plant from the village. He said that if he became the Sarpanch [leader of the village council] of this village, he would support us and try to do his best to remove the plant, and then what happened? He became the Sarpanch and within fifteen days he changed completely.'

 

Coca-Cola uses letters from the Sarpanch on their website to indicate the level of support they have within the Kaladera community.

 

Out by the grove, with the music and speeches of the conference wafting in the background, we chat for a hour or so. About how the police create a three-kilometre exclusion zone around the plant on demonstration days, about local politicians politicking and the shenanigans of local skullduggery but mainly about Kuriji's farm.

‘If you come to Kaladera I will show you.'

‘Thank you, that would be great.' I say.

‘I will even show you the empty land in my farm.'

‘Fantastic,' I say, hoping the language of raised eyebrows is not international.

 

It is not often that I get invited to someone's home to see an empty field. I suspect that the invitation is just an excuse, he wants to get me to the farm and then he'll do what all the farmers do around here: show me his empty well.

Four days later Kuriji leads us through Kaladera, a village by Indian standards but with a population of 12,000 to 13,000 people it would constitute a small town in the UK. This is a farmer's village to be sure, every other stall is piled with fruit and veg and every other shop sells sickles, similar to the old Soviet flag-style ones but much straighter. One trader has theirs laid out on a table next to the hair grips, and I envisage a shopper holding up some rupees tonelessly saying, ‘Just the sickle and the hair grips, thanks love.' Here the cattle seem to aimlessly lollop down the roads, their hides as parched as their soft bellows, lethargic and thin they have more ribs on show than London Fashion Week.

 

In the centre of the village cool narrow alleyways bustle with shoppers and traders, where the milk-sweet sellers pick pieces of
barfi
from stacks piled on trays and hot fresh pastries are scooped out of pans of bubbling oil. Chai sellers and pan wallahs line the outskirts of these pathways where men sit spinning an eternity out of a tiny cup.

 

Kuriji chivvies us along, worried we are late. He looks old and smart today in his white pressed shirt and grey slacks. We arrive at a white building that looks like a small fort complete with mini battlements, the kind of place the Oompa Loompas might billet in times of war.

‘Come. They are waiting.' Kuriji points to the door, clutching his ever-present notebook. The entrance is a shaded archway beyond which lies a small courtyard, partially covered with a low awning of metal sheets, propped up in the middle by a single pole. This is the local primary school, and the rug laid in the shadow of the awning is where the children sit for lessons, taught out in the open and out of the sun. Classroom charts and pictures are pinned to the back wall next to a blackboard with spellings hand written in Hindi and English and an adult-size bench sits at the front. Today the school doubles as a meeting place for the village resistance to the Coke bottling plant and twenty farmers sit waiting patiently on the large rug as we arrive. The farmers greet us with smiles and deference to Kuriji. These men form the Committee for Struggle, which is exactly what it is - a committee engaged in a struggle; an entity that marries India's twin loves of social movements and bureaucracy.

 

After tea, Kuriji sits to one side of the assembled group, notebook at the ready. It is not merely for my benefit that the men are gathered here, there is to be a planning meeting after I have chatted to them. In the meantime one of the farmers decides that the best introduction to the assembled group is a story, which he proceeds to tell. Kaladera has just celebrated Holi the festival of colour, where people mark the occasion by painting each other with coloured water. It is, I am told, advisable to wear old clothes around festival time as no one is immune and the administering can range from a polite face smearing, to throwing coloured water to using super soakers full of paint. The bolder and brighter the colours the better: reds, purples, greens, all collide leaving an end result that can be a tad LSD. With this in mind the farmer begins, ‘We had a programme called Holi Milan here in Kaladera,' explaining this
is traditionally a party where grudges and ill will are set aside. ‘And for this Holi Milan, all the people contributed some money. We made arrangements for food and drinks for everyone. The manager of Coca-Cola, he was also there. Since it was open, anyone could come.' He pauses and looks around the gathering in the courtyard. They smile knowingly, already anticipating the punchline. ‘The villagers thought that everyone would contribute, have some good food and have a nice get together... but the villagers had a problem. The villagers' biggest enemy had come to be a part of their celebrations. Everyone was furious.' What were they to do? They couldn't ask the Coca-Cola manager to leave as it would be impolite but he was spoiling the party by being there. So as it was Holi ‘one of the oldest members of the committee he took some photocopying ink in his hands and applied it on the manager's face. He blackened his face.' Amidst the bright colours of Holi the Coke manager stood covered in jet-black ink and left shortly after that. The farmer telling the story pauses, looks around at his friends and then to me before saying, ‘There has been a lot of tension since then.'

 

This story is carving its way into village memory already, everyone seems to know it and have probably told it themselves. And the farmers smile, happy to hear the tale told once again. Its ending is my cue to ask the question I have asked in countries halfway around the world: ‘What was it like before Coca-Cola came?'