August 8, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-us-Sani 9, 1424

MUMBAI, Aug 7: Protesters in India on Thursday called upon US beverage giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi to quit the country as they stepped up a “break bottle” campaign launched after a study said their soft drinks contained lethal doses of pesticides.

Activists from powerful political groups such as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party smashed Coke and Pepsi bottles and trampled on cardboard cups bearing their logos outside Bombay’s busy Churchgate railway station.

“Coke and Pepsi quit India. You are playing with our lives,” shouted a mob of nearly 100 activists, which also forced Coke and Pepsi outlets in and around the station to down shutters.

The activists tore down posters of film stars such as Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor who advertise the two brands.

The youth wing of the BJP had on Wednesday burnt posters of the stars as part of their protest.

“The two multinationals have to get out of India. We are giving them 10 days by which time final test reports of these drinks will come,” said Aslam Sheikh, president of the youth wing of the Samajwadi party.

“If the reports are positive for pesticides we will break every bottle the companies make. We will burn down their vehicles carrying these drinks on the roads.”

The parliament in New Delhi Wednesday took the two beverages off MPs’ canteen menu following the release of a damaging report the day before by the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based private organisation.

On Thursday a prestigious engineering university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu banned the drinks from its campuses.

“If the parliament can take Coke and Pepsi off its menu, why can’t we? The common man’s life is as valuable as a parliamentarian’s,” said an activist while stomping on a poster of Shahrukh Khan.

The government of Maharashtra has ordered comprehensive tests on the drinks, even though some reports say initial investigations by state authorities have found the beverages do in fact adhere to prescribed food and drug norms.

The report of the Delhi centre claimed 12 leading drinks marketed in India by Coca-Cola and Pepsi had a “deadly cocktail of pesticide residues” not found in their beverages in the United States.

It said the two manufacturers had failed to purify their source water in India and that repeated exposure to the fizzy drinks could lead to cancer, liver and kidney damage and birth defects.

The beverage giants, which have a stranglehold over India’s 270-million case a year carbonated drinks market, have vehemently denied the charges.

PepsiCo India’s chairman Rajeev Bakshi called the accusations “wild allegations ... calculated to spread consumer panic”.

Health Minister Sushma Swaraj told parliament Wednesday the report on the danger of the fizzy drinks was “shocking” and called for a “comprehensive report” on the issue.

Coca-Cola has also drawn flak for allegedly giving contaminated waste as “organic fertiliser” to farmers in the southern state of Kerala.

A study by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board released on Wednesday said there were high levels of cadmium in the sludge, four times the permissible World Health Organisation limit.

Coca-Cola denies the charge.

This is not the first time the two multinationals have faced rough weather in India.

Last September, the Supreme Court pulled them up for defacing the picturesque Rohtang mountain pass in Himachal Pradesh state with advertisements and billboards and causing environmental damage.

In the 1970s Coke was kicked out of India under an aggressive protest led by then trade union leader George Fernandes, who is now India’s defence minister, as part of Soviet-inspired protectionist policies.

The two companies regained footholds in India in the early 1990s after a series of economic reforms introduced by the then Congress government.

CONTAMINATED WASTE: In another development, Coca Cola came under pressure after environment watchdogs accused it of giving waste contaminated with cancer-linked chemicals as “organic fertiliser” to Indian farmers in Kerala state.

Farmers living near a plant at Plachimada, in the Palakkad district of the state, run by the Hindustan Coca Cola Company, said the plant had given them sludge and solid waste as fertiliser since it opened three years ago.—AFP