Belching Out the Devil (30 page)

 

 

I
have simple rules for my life that apply to wherever I am and whatever situation I am in, but in particular they apply to India, and the rules are: I don't do joss sticks, chanting or naked. Yoga, yogis, gurus and inner journeys can fuck themselves as far as I am concerned. And the same applies to anything in the vicinity of the word ‘tantric' - I can't think of anything worse than an hour-long orgasm - it sounds
exhausting, pointless and showy. I do not want to find my inner self - I've found more than enough of myself already and what I've found so far is distressing enough. Furthermore the answer is ‘no' to the question ‘Do I need a fat bloke with a beard selling me meditation tapes and mantras?' Nor do I want anyone helping me reach enlightenment by teaching me breathing exercises. I have been breathing for forty-five years without a single lesson. Frankly when I want to expand my consciousness I'll read a book, thank you very much.

 

Having stated these simple rules, believed in them and indeed led my life by them I am somewhat bewildered to find myself in a Gandhian ashram in the middle of the desert having spent the early part of the evening sat on a rug at the top of a mountain having tea with a ‘Holy man' dressed in a longi.
^b
Frankly it has all gone a bit
Donnie Darko
. Furthermore I am not calmed by the fact that it is midnight, a thunderstorm is breaking overhead, the lightning has brought down the electricity, the place is in total darkness while the window shutters slam and bang and there is no one else in the
dormitory. If it were not for the two frogs and one mouse I would be completely alone. The bed is wooden with a straw mattress frame and the pillows have so many sweat stains that I wouldn't like to guess at how much DNA is soaked in them. I am sitting under a mosquito net that has been deployed more out of a need to erect a barrier of some kind between me and whatever else is out there than to stop me from getting bitten. I'm all for protecting the environment and minimalising our reliance on industrial-based consumerism but I am currently inhabiting a world that has never smelled the simple chemical pleasure of pine-fresh cleaner and I am not sure I like it. So holding a Maglite between my teeth and writing in my notebook I try and make sense of the past 48 hours and how I got to be here.

 

It started as usual with The Coca-Cola Company. The Company gave little credence to the fact that their own report recommended serious consideration be given to shutting down the plant in Kaladera. It had been the threat of a boycott by the University of Michigan that had led to Coke commissioning TERI, so when the report was finished Coke sent a copy to the university. In the seven-page covering letter Coca-Cola failed to mention that TERI had suggested the Kaladera plant be shut down. Instead they claimed the plant in Kaladera was responsible for putting
more
water into the ground than it took out,
²
despite the farmers, the workers and Coke's own report saying the opposite. I am not suggesting this is a comparison but if I ever get caught shoplifting my defence is going to be, ‘Actually I was putting stuff on the shelf!'

 

Kaladera, like most of Rajasthan, relies on groundwater - getting water from a well. Coke claim that they are replenishing (recharging) the groundwater using ‘rainwater
harvesting schemes…In Kaladera the rainwater harvesting systems we have installed have the potential to recharge about fifteen times the amount of water the plant uses currently…Even in recent years when rainfall has been below average,
actual recharge has been more than five times the amount of water used for production of our beverages
³
[my emphasis].' This appears to be an amazing assertion; it is not often you hear of water-intensive industries putting five times the amount of water they use back into the ground. And considering Coke normally charges for its water, I have to say nice of them to donate for free too.

 

The next line of the Company's letter to Michigan does qualify it somewhat, ‘we will install measuring devices that will verify the amount of water recharged'. Now some might sneer at the fact that the Company can make such specific claims without bothering to actually measure and record the quantities of water involved. But I say shame on you naysayers! We are witnessing the birth of a new scientific era where companies can state facts without having to fall back on the outdated and tiresome concept of collated scientific data.

 

When I pressed Coke on this technicality, they told me that ‘The company, along with community/NGO, tries to take water table readings before and after monsoon, keeps historical data, conduct community interviews, facilitate media visits to understand the efficacy and impact of such projects besides site visits by its own high-ranking officials'.
⁴
Oh where to begin...Firstly, I ask the Company how they monitor their scheme and they reply saying the company ‘tries' to measure water. Secondly they say they keep historical data but of what? Old train tickets are ‘historical data'. An Enron financial report is historical data. A stalker's trophy cupboard is ‘historical
data'. Thirdly the company say they ‘facilitate media visits', so how does this relate to monitoring the schemes, am I to assume that the paparazzi finish with Brad and Angelina and then nip over to Kaladera with their hydrology kits? Fourthly, the company says they get visits from ‘its own high-ranking officials'. Well done - your boss looked at it. So to conclude: The Coca-Cola Company, the company that put their own products in space with a device that enabled astronauts to drink their fizzy pop in zero gravity, when asked how they monitor their own rainwater harvesting schemes replied, ‘We do try…I've got some cuttings...the boss looked at it and a photographer took a photo.'

 

Assuming Coke's claim is based on a paper calculation let's make one of our own. According to Coca-Cola the Kaladera plant extracted nearly 88 million litres of water in 2007.
⁵
If Coke's statement were to apply to this data then the company would need to be putting at least 440 million litres of water into the ground through their rainwater harvesting structures to replace the 88 million it took out. I wanted to find out how and if Coke are putting these amounts of water back into the ground, which is how I ended up at the ashram.

 

To be honest, I know a little more than nothing about rainwater harvesting but substantially less than anything of worth. If we were measuring ignorance in units I would assess mine to be about a
Daily Express
's worth of stupidity; despite which I have a very strong negative opinion of rainwater harvesting. I have judged it to be a little tie-dye and lurking near the borders of pseudo-science. However, if Coca-Cola are basing their continued existence in Kaladera on a claim to be a net contributor of water in a drought-prone area, based on their rainwater harvesting projects…well it makes sense to try
and understand a bit about it. Which is why I made contact with the man credited with pioneering water management and community rainwater harvesting schemes in Rajasthan, Rajendra Singh. He is referred to as the Rainwater Man and knows enough about the subject for Coca-Cola to try and get him on board for their schemes. Something he took exception to.
⁶

Rajendra Singh is staying in Delhi at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. ‘Have you been before?' asks the taxi driver as we weave for dear life.

‘No, never.'

‘Do you know anything about it?'

‘Well it's run on Gandhian principles…it's educational and they have rooms you can stay in…other than that the only thing I can tell you is I would be surprised if they have a mini-bar service.'

‘You are meeting Gandhi followers, yes?'

‘Yes, though I wouldn't recognise a Gandhian if they hit me in the face…'

This was apparently a faux pas.

 

The driver resumes talking when he stops to ask for directions at the next lights and we re-enter the fray of Delhi's traffic with a firmer sense of where we are going. At one point a big banner on the side of the road reads ‘Make every day safety day. 37
^th
National Safety Day 8 March.' At least I think it was the eighth, it was hard to tell as we were swerving to avoid a cow in the middle lane. I have chewed my nails in many cars around the world but Delhi beats them all for sheer fear, here a driver's horn will wear out quicker than the brake pads; the
experience is like playing Grand Theft Auto with four million people connected to the same console.

 

The front of the Gandhi Peace Foundation is a big building that looks like a university done in the style of a Soviet apartment block but without the frills. The walls used to be white and the strip lights used to work without flickering. Rajendra's room is bare save three camp beds with slim mattresses, two painfully hard wooden chairs built by comfort-hating carpenters and a portrait of Gandhi. Undoubtedly Gandhi was one of the most important political leaders of the twentieth century but he could have encouraged his followers to accessorise just a little bit. Frugality may well be the moral cornerstone of their philosophy but they manage to make the Amish look decadent.

 

Rajendra Singh leads me to the seat and smiles. He is nearly fifty with a black beard and a face that runs with emotion, his expressions letting you know the tone of the next comment before he opens his mouth. Shifting the folds of his kurta that hangs loosely on his stocky frame he sits on the seat, with an easy and relaxed manner that belies the austerity of the chair. And with a wave of his hand to signal the start of his story, he smiles, leans backs and says, ‘I started this work in 1984 in Rajasthan in a place called Gaoloura village, in the Alwar District. This area is semi-arid with hardly any rainfall annually.'

 

He had originally gone there as part of an educational programme but became immersed in creating rainwater harvesting structures when a village elder taught him about the traditional ways of capturing water. Rajendra smiles as he tells me about the physical work he did. The first structure he made was a
johad
, a concave pond, he worked on it by himself
and it took four years to make. Which probably explains his ability to luxuriate in the wooden chair; after spending four years navvying on your own I would imagine he could nap on concrete.

 

‘In '88 we had very good rainfall, which collected and recharged the underground aquifer. You can see water in the wells that were old and dry before.' Though his English is infinitely more advanced than my Hindi it occasionally requires minor mental adjustments to get the flow of it. ‘So in the beginning,' he says, ‘it is a little hard, because in the beginning nobody believed, nobody trust it, but when you can show some visual impact, people come…and the next year thirty-nine villages start rainwater harvesting structures.'

 

Over 4,000 rainwater harvesting structures have now been built with this region, with the help and inspiration of Rajendra Singh and the non-government organisation Tarun Bharat Sangh. The work is done on the Gandhian principle, shunning development money, government aid and grant assistance, preferring instead on community work and self-reliance. ‘In my country the water is not the asset of the government, it is not the asset of any one person…the responsibility for the drinking water, for agriculture, for industry is the community responsibility.'

 

It was when Rajendra and his structures started to make old rivers run again that people began to notice him outside the district. I ask him about this story.

‘The river come after twelve years, the river was dry, and river come back in '98.'

‘What was the name of the river?'

‘Arvari river.'

‘So this river was once dry…'

‘Dead and dry.'

‘And it is flowing?'

‘The river is perennial.'

 

Using a series of dams built by villages along the length of it, the river started to flow again. Not surprisingly he began to attract press attention, articles appeared and awards quickly followed. Rajendra became known as the ‘Water Man of Rajasthan'.

 

I am not exactly sure of how rainwater harvesting works, from the sound of it, you build dams and ponds in a place where water can collect and then it seeps into the ground. But maybe I am oversimplifying it and more to the point if it works and he can do it, can Coca-Cola? But this question is given short shrift, ‘I am saying they can't give back to the region, the water they are taking is from the underground water. They can't, they are not doing recharge water.'