--- On Thu, 5/3/09, Shiva Shankar <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Shiva Shankar <[email protected]>
> Subject: Coca Cola/Plachimada: An open rejoinder to Mr Shashi Tharoor (fwd)
> To:
> Date: Thursday, 5 March, 2009, 5:01 PM
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: S Faizi [mailto:[email protected]]
>
> Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 10:13 AM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: Coca Cola/Plachimada: An open rejoinder to Mr
> Shashi Tharoor
>
> From: S.Faizi, R2 Saundarya Apartments, Nandavanam,
> Thiruvananthapuram, [email protected]
> (Environmental Expert Member: Kerala Groundwater Authority;
> Chairman: Indian Biodiversity Forum)
>
> Mr.Shashi Tharoor, Chairman, Afras Ventures, 230 Park
> Avenue, Suite 2525, New York, NY 10169
>
>
> Dear Mr Tharoor,
>
> I have read with interest your response to the Plachimada
> Struggle Solidarity Committee’s criticism of your being in
> a PR project of the Coca Cola company in India, in Hindu and
> the full text on a web site that carries your PR material. I
> do not have a grain of opposition to your being in the cola
> PR outfit, for it is natural for people like to you to be in
> places like that. However, I am writing this public response
> to you in order to address the misinformation contained in
> your letter, outdoing even the PR staff of the company, and
> the unwarranted sweeping remarks you have made on Kerala
> development.
>
> The High Court Division Bench verdict in favour of the
> company that you have referred to was made subsequent to a
> single bench verdict against the company. And the Division
> Bench verdict is being challenged in the Supreme Court by
> the Perumatti Panchayat and by the people’s groups
> agitating against the company. The CWRDM-lead report was
> flawed in many respects, as is being argued in the SC, which
> is also an issue of concern for CWRDM scientists as the
> institution has suffered an erosion of credibility. The very
> assumption of the report, in estimating the total
> groundwater availability in Chitoor block, that 20 per cent
> of the rainfall can be recharged is flawed as the Central
> Groundwater Board’s (CGWB) assessment in 2003 had put the
> recharge in areas such as Chitoor at 5-8 per cent. While the
> committee report put the annual recharge in the block at
> 74.1 million cubic meters (mcm), based on the CGWB’s
> scientific estimation of recharge rate it is only between
> 16.6 to 33.2 mcms. The report also suppresses the domestic
> and agricultural water needs. The central question in the
> High Court case was not as much about pollution and
> depletion of water resources, land pollution by heavy
> metals, or the right to life provision of the Constitution,
> as about the power of the local panchayat to ask for the
> closure of the factory. The Groundwater Dept, in a report on
> the groundwater of Palakkad dist prepared in 2006, presented
> an alarming picture of the state of groundwater in Chitoor
> block.
>
> The legal status of groundwater has rightly become that of
> a public resource with the enactment of the Kerala
> Groundwater Act which came into force in 2003. However, this
> law (as well as several other points from the environmental
> jurisprudence) was not considered in the High Court case.
> Groundwater was considered as a private resource, while the
> said law asserts it as a public resource over which the
> appropriate agencies of the State have control in public
> interest. And this change in the legal status of groundwater
> is also going to be examined by the apex court.
>
> You attempt to deny the toxic sludge. However, the Supreme
> Court Monitoring Committee (SCMC), in its report following
> its site visit in August 2004, had determined the presence
> of heavy metals (cadmium and lead) in the sludge, and this
> was distributed by the cunning company to the unsuspecting
> farmers as ‘fertiliser’. And the State Pollution Control
> Board had directed the company to cease operations. The
> pollution of the well waters around the factory was reported
> by independent labs and the SPCB also confirmed it by asking
> the people not to use the water of the panchayat well it had
> tested.
>
> I visited the area two weeks ago as a member of the expert
> committee attached to the State SC/ST Commission and found
> the situation of the local people, ST/SC in particular,
> extremely worrying- there is hardly any water in the wells
> and where it is present it is not usable. Pollution of
> drinking water is a crime under the SC/ST (Atrocities) Act.
> On 14-9-2004 the company agreed to provide piped water to
> the residents of the area and the KPCB had constituted a
> committee to oversee this activitiy. This was upon the
> instruction of the SCMC, obviously as a compensation for the
> water crisis caused by the company and it was not contingent
> upon the functioning of the factory. The company reneged on
> this agreement too.
>
> Polluter Pays Principle has become an integral part of our
> jurisprudence. The Rio Declaration (principle 16) upholds
> this as well as the liability and redress provision of the
> Biodiversity Convention (I had been a negotiator in the
> formulation of both), among other multilateral soft laws and
> treaties. And this is squarely applicable in the case of
> Coca Cola at Plachimada. This was why the Kerala Goundwater
> Authority, after study by a subcommittee, recommended to the
> govt at its 13th meeting in Oct 2008 that compensation
> should be obtained from the company, on behalf of the
> people, for the pollution and groundwater depletion it has
> caused. It also recommended to make a comprehensive,
> multidisciplinary assessment of the damage caused by the
> company to the environment, human health and
> agriculture. Bringing an offender to justice is in the
> best common interest of business lest the law abiding
> competitors are left at a disadvantage.
>
> Your reference to the Global Compact was interesting. But
> you have carefully withheld the information from your
> readers that this was a project that was fiercely opposed by
> the civil society organizations. It was not a legitimate UN
> activity, negotiated and agreed by a policy setting body
> such as the GA. It was part of a series of initiatives to
> diminish the importance of the need for corporate bodies
> complying with the domestic laws of the countries, by
> introducing and promoting a voluntary code of conduct. It
> was also part of the move to whittle away the powers of
> multilateral bodies such as UNCTAD, supported by the
> developing countries. As a corporate boss you will be proud
> to have promoted the Global Compact, but its real twin role
> as a greenwash and as a means to belittle the importance of
> legal compliance is obvious to the public. Corporate
> responsibility is a crooked term, what the citizens expect
> from the corporates is corporate accountability to the laws
> of the country. If Coca Cola, for example, is willing to
> comply with the laws of the country, pay for the public
> resources it has used at the market rate and pay
> compensation for the damages it has caused that will more
> than suffice, we don’t need the Cola to take any
> responsibility for our development.
>
> As for your remarks on Kerala’s development scene, it was
> certainly uncalled for. Kerala is one of the most globalised
> societies in the world, and we were at the centre of open
> global trade until 500 years ago when the Europeans came as
> savage invaders displacing the Arab traders. Your
> accusations of Kerala as ‘over-politicised’ and this as
> a reason for an imaginary discouragement of investment in
> the state are amusing right wing cliché that fit very well
> with the intellectual immaturity that characterizes your
> writings. It is an insult to India’s unity that you are
> ashamed that Keralites work in other parts of the India. It
> is diametrically opposed to the spirit of Kerala’s
> globalism that you are ashamed of our people working in the
> Gulf and other countries. But you are saying this sitting in
> an American city and heading a business firm in Gulf. And
> you claim to be a Keralite when your web site proudly
> announces your fluency in English and French but does not
> even mention Malayalam though our language and its
> literature has a longer history than English. But such
> contradictions are typical of an intellectual simpleton’s
> writings. The Kerala model of development is an unavoidable
> term in the international development discourse, not the
> least the UN’s, but you are blissfully uninformed even
> about this. In child mortality, for example, we fare better
> than the US city you live in. Empowerment thru political
> conscientisation is at the core of the relatively high
> development indices we have achieved. Your understanding of
> India, as seen in your writings, is no deeper than a western
> tourist’s.
>
> Let me refer to just a couple of such writings. In one of
> your articles you have chauvinistically chided Indian women
> for giving up sari for western dress. Even such chauvinistic
> opinions I have no problem in tolerating but the fun is when
> you see the photo of the author of the silly article dressed
> in western suit and neck tie totally alien to traditional
> male attire! And in a subsequent article you narrated an
> anecdote where your Danish boss in the UN abused the Indian
> kurta you wore as a surgeon’s coat and that made you
> resolve not to wear the traditional Indian dress any more.
> As a committed supporter of the UN cause and as a some times
> participant in UN events, I take offence in the incident you
> narrated and your acceptance of the same. As a multilateral
> body the UN respects the multiple cultures, and if someone
> derogatively talked about a country’s traditional dress he
> should not have been on the UN staff any longer, if someone
> had set a norm like that it should have been brought to the
> attention of the concerned decision making body. UN events
> indeed are also the occasion you find the most fabulous
> traditional dress of women and men from west African
> nations, the various Arab traditional dresses from Morocco
> to Yemen, the elegant sheravni, sari and churidar from south
> Asia, and so on. I myself presided over a youth conference
> organized by Unesco/UNEP in Moscow in 1987 (part of
> Tbilisi+10) wearing a white cotton kurta/pyjama, and nobody
> cared about what I wore (I wouldn’t have allowed it
> either). And your sectarian mindset blamed the Punjabis for
> giving masculine names for their daughters, forgetting that
> what you have done with your own name isn’t anything
> different. Sasi is how the masculine name is spelt in Kerala
> while Shashi, the way you spell it, is a feminine name in
> north India!
>
> Your reply talks of the anti-Cola activists scoring some
> political point. No one can read any party politics in their
> letter, the Plachimada anti-Cola struggle is beyond
> divisions along party politics. The ruling LDF supports the
> Plachimada cause as much as the opposition UDF. And in the
> struggle itself you find people of all political
> affiliations and creeds. We are all one on the issue of
> justice, but you cannot perhaps understand that. But if you
> are talking about politics with your ambition to get a seat
> in the forthcoming Parliament election in view, I wish the
> Congress party gives you a ticket, for it deserves you. That
> will be a good self punishment for the Congress party for
> having allowed you once to embarrass the country with your
> UN election.
>
> Best regards
> S.Faizi
>
>
>
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