The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [128]
Even so, the plant closure in Plachimada continued to resonate across India—and the world—showing the power and political pressure that could be mobilized by a determined group of citizens. “Whatever the technical reasons for the closure of the plant, it was really done because of the community resistance,” boasts Ajayan. And that included not only local resistance, but also the international pressure. “So far as their brand image is concerned,” says Bijoy, “the campaign in India didn’t seem to bother them that much. The campaign in the U.S. seemed to worry them.”
Closing one plant, however, didn’t necessarily make it easier to close any more. Coke knew that brand image cut both ways. When Neville Isdell took charge in the summer of 2004, he moved to neutralize the Indian situation as quickly as he had moved to still the controversy around childhood obesity in the United States. Within weeks, he’d flown to India personally to assess the situation, even toying with the idea of spinning off Hindustan Coca-Cola to become a franchise bottler, providing a buffer to insulate the company from criticism. In the end, however, Coca-Cola India took a course more similar to the one taken in the United States than that taken in Colombia: remaking itself from an environmental pariah to an environmental leader.
The village of Kala Dera is located some twenty-five miles from Jaipur, the capital of the northwestern state of Rajasthan and one of India’s top tourist attractions. Known as the pink city for the rose color of its ancient walls, Jaipur is chock-full of temples and maharaja palaces. The opulence quickly fades, however, on the dusty road out to Kala Dera, a screaming tumult of roadside cafés and brightly colored shops spilling sacks of grain and farming equipment.
Past the commercial areas, green shoots sprout from earth where farmers have planted wheat in advance of the monsoon. Few people are out to tend them, however, on this mid-June day, when it’s 110 degrees and there is little shade to break up the sun’s heat aside from the spiky khejri trees that provide fodder for camels. This is a transitional zone; half of Rajasthan is fed by rivers, the other is arid desert completely dependent on groundwater.
Few areas are less ideal for a water-intensive industry like bottling soft drinks. Then again, the same aridity that makes the land thirsty also parches the throats of the populace. To cut transportation costs to serve the area, Hindustan Coca-Coca built a bottling plant here in 1999 in an industrial park set up by the state government. “Rajasthan is an important market,” says northern India public affairs head Ranjan. “There was market potential—that is the only reason we sited it here.”
Today Ranjan has brought with him a colleague, whom he identifies as a public relations consultant named Sunil Sharma, who is dressed in a dark blue long-sleeve shirt and is as gregarious as Ranjan is taciturn. “I have been on roads all over the world, to Holland, Belgium, Paris,” he says as he pulls into honking traffic on the way from Jaipur. “And I come back to India and the air is stinky, but it’s great. I breathe it in, and it’s a perfect democracy, I think. Anyone can drive anywhere, anyone can do anything.”
He seems to realize what he’s said the moment it’s out of his mouth. After all, it wasn’t long before Coke was accused of doing anything it wanted in Kala Dera—especially depleting the aquifer without regard to community water needs. As in Mehdiganj, Ranjan denies the charge. While here he concedes the water level is dropping, he cites studies showing that industry accounts for less than 1 percent of water use, while farmers use 85 percent. “Having said that,” he adds, “we also need to look at what water users are doing to replenish the water they are taking.”
That is Ranjan’s goal today. Learning from the controversy elsewhere in the country, Coca-Cola India has moved aggressively in the name of corporate social responsibility to actually replace