The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [120]
Pleading poverty, Coca-Cola India asked the government for a stay of execution in divesting its shares in Hindustan Beverages, arguing it would lead to a fire sale in shares that would hurt the company’s all-important brand image. The government granted it, even as the national and foreign press slammed Coke for reneging on its promise. Now, seven years after the deadline, only 10 percent of the company is Indian-owned.
Already in 2001, however, Coke’s fortunes were beginning to change, first with a new strategy to divide the market into two separate parts. Sophisticated urbanites were sold an aspirational campaign invoking an upscale American way of life, with the tagline “life as it should be.” Meanwhile in the rural market, the company pushed the simpler slogan “Coke means cold” to appeal to a generic love of cold drinks in the steamy back-waters of the country. Akin to its strategy in Mexico, Coke also marketed a smaller bottle for half the price in rural areas. The gambit began to show promise. Volume grew by nearly 40 percent in 2002, with the company breaking even for the first time since reentry. Business, it seemed, had finally turned a corner. Then all hell broke loose.
The first rumblings of what would grow into a national condemnation of Coca-Cola began not in Mehdiganj but in a sleepy village in the southern state of Kerala. Once known as the Malabar Coast, Kerala is a sliver of land in southwestern India, just seventy-five miles across at its widest, sandwiched between the ocean and a craggy mountain chain known as the Western Ghats.
Thanks to the wall of mountains, the state gets more rain than any other in India. Compared with the heat and frenzy of Varanasi, the air here is fresh and cool by late June after the monsoons have hit. Everything is lush and green, framed by picturesque mountain peaks with mist curling around their middles. As in Chiapas, however, all of the abundance can be misleading. Water is unevenly distributed in the state, with some areas in a “rain shadow” behind a mountain peak getting half of the rainfall of a village just a few miles away.
That is the case in Plachimada, where Hindustan Coca-Cola decided to build a bottling plant that began operation in March 2000. The company sank six bore wells to take advantage of the village’s seemingly ample groundwater. Excited by the possibility of jobs, both the state and the local village council, the Perumatty Panchayat, fast-tracked approval.
“When Coca-Cola first started, people were very happy,” says Ajayan, convener of the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, who grew up a few miles from here but now lives in the southern city of Trivandrum. (Like many Indians, he goes by only one name.) As in Mehdiganj, however, the villagers very quickly changed their tune, when their wells started drying up and their water started being polluted. Driving past palm trees and rice paddies, Ajayan slows the car slightly to point out the gates of the plant. Rising thirty feet above the green undergrowth, a twisted metal frame is now all that remains of the sign where Hindustan Coca-Cola once hung. “Many villages have boycotted Coca-Cola, [but] nowhere in the world has a Coca-Cola unit but Plachimada,” Ajayan says proudly.
The resistance that led to that closing started in earnest in 2002, led by a shrunken sexagenarian named Mailamma, who passed away a few years ago. Ajayan pulls off the road and leads the way down a path