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been experiencing droughts all over the country the last few years, says M. S. Rathore, head of the Jaipur-based nonprofit Centre for Environment and Development Studies. He actually agrees with Coke that farmers are responsible for most of the water depletion, overexploiting the carrying capacity of the land in an effort to grow as much as possible. That doesn’t mean Coke’s contention that industry uses only 1 percent of the water is accurate. While that may be a statewide average, in certain districts industry uses up to 50 percent. And the same goes for the rainfall averages, which are drawn from one hundred years, despite the fact that Rajasthan, at least, gets only one year of good rain in every seven or eight years. Of the remaining years, half of them may see just two or three rainy days total.

So what about Coke’s claims that it is recharging seventeen times what it takes out in Kala Dera? He shakes his head immediately. “It’s not possible. I don’t believe them.” Is it possible even to recharge half that, a quarter of that? “If they are recharging even five times, then the water level should come up—did it?” he shoots back. “No. Contrary to that, the water level is coming down in that area, it’s not coming up. The calculation may be right, but what is actually happening? Did they get it?”

Ranjan repeats his assertion that Coke can’t accurately measure the actual recharge of its rainwater wells. While they could put in a groundwater gauge called a piezometer to measure water levels, he says, it would require sending someone manually to check it after each rainfall. “It will not work in auto-mode,” he says. “There has to be someone there to take the reading.”

Merely a little bit of research online, however, turns up a company called Integrated Geo Instruments and Services in Hyderabad, India, that not only produces a line of groundwater monitoring equipment, but also lists Hindustan Coca-Cola among its clients. Contacted via e-mail, a representative confirms that it offers something called an “automatic water level indicator”—a computer attached to a length of cable that registers groundwater levels in a well “continuously and without human intervention.” In fact, the representative says, Coke uses these very devices throughout India to monitor water levels in its bore wells. The cost: $1,800 each, meaning that Coke could outfit every one of its rainwater structures with a probe for just $540,000, a fraction of the $10 million it recently bequeathed to the Coca-Cola India Foundation to spend on community CSR projects throughout the country.

Reached at the company’s headquarters, the representative confirms that the logger can automatically monitor groundwater levels, and also says that Hindustan Coca-Cola has bought loggers in the past from the company to monitor its intake wells. Ranjan doesn’t respond to e-mails asking if Hindustan Coca-Cola has considered using such a device to monitor rainwater harvesting.

Leaving Jaipur for the railway station, it miraculously begins to rain. Within moments, it’s a hard rain, washing over the pavement and soaking into the dirt on both sides of the road. It tapers off quickly, however, and in five minutes, it’s all but over. Srivastava’s cell phone rings, and it’s Professor Rathore, speaking excitedly on the other end. Srivastava nods and thanks him before hanging up. “He says that accounts for one rainy day.”

TEN

The Case Against “Killer Coke”

Despite activists’ successes holding Coke accountable in India, the real fight over operations in that country—as well as in Colombia—would be fought in the United States.

A week after being wrestled to the ground and ejected from Coke’s 2004 annual meeting, Ray Rogers was back on the campaign trail, looking for one big campus to serve as a poster child for his campaign. In late April 2004, he stood in front of the unsubtly named Radical Student Union at the University of Massachusetts, trying to fire up students to break their exclusive pouring-rights contract expiring in August. “The Coca-Cola Company is an enterprise rife