Behemoths like The Coca-Cola Company spend millions of dollars in discharging their corporate social responsibility. Environmental protection, including conservation of scarce natural resources like water, forms an integral part of these corporate social responsibility endeavors.
Ironically, the operations of these beverage companies are so designed that ground water is bound to deplete in areas where they set up bottling plants. The ground reality in Uttar Pradesh is no different.
As many as 18 village councils in the state have demanded a ban on extraction of water by Coca-Cola. The village councils are being supported by California-based India Resource Center.
The villages are located in Varanasi, the constituency of India’s Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi. The stakeholders want Coca-Cola should shut its bottling plant in Mehdiganj so that the pressure on ground water decreases.
In 2011, the Central Ground Water Authority had declared the Arajiline block, the area where Mehdiganj plant is located as ‘Over Exploited’.
Amit Srivastava of India Resource Centre minced no words in blaming the company, “Coca-Cola paints a pretty picture of itself internationally as a responsible user of water, but the reality in India is that it exploits groundwater at the expense of the poor, the women, children, farmers and livestock who have to live with less water because Coca-Cola mines groundwater in a water scarce area for profit.”
The scarce water resources in the region are being used by Coca-Cola for commercial purposes as well as by the local community which earns a livelihood primarily through agriculture.
