Long before IPL was pitted against water, people here were given a more watery choice — between Coke and water. They ended up losing both. More than a soft drink, Coke meant jobs and a good life to this backward farming belt where the soft drink major set up a bottling plant in 2002. In just four years career dreams were gone with the fizz. As for water, it is still scarce enough to decide the course of this election. It takes sheer genius to drop out of both the industrial and environmental maps at once, presided over by two of the state’s most seasoned politicians. Both, in the fray this time as well, are locally rooted -sitting MLA and Congressman K Achuthan into his fifth assembly contest and Janata Dal stalwart and innovative farmer K Krishnankutty, three-time MLA in, out and now back with the Left Front. The two have been very much part of the local lore that played out as a globally televised environment movement to save mother earth from the multinational. Medha Patkar to Vandana Shiva visited the thatched shed across the factory where Mayilamma, an unknown tribal woman who grew into an icon, led a sit-in agitation that clocked a record thousand days. They wanted the company to be penalised for environmental damage and shut down, which happened in 2006. [related-post] In 10 years, the long back-lit name board of the cola giant’s Indian associate “Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Ltd” has vanished and under the mangled arch, the factory gate serves as a clamp for party flags and posters. Through successive elections the 48-acre factory compound in disuse has grown into inconvenient memory. No leader talks about it. Certainly not at any length. Across the road in the small eatery, public memory isn’t fading out so conveniently. Why should we bury the truth, asks the small gathering sipping nannari, a locally brewed herbal soft drink. The youngest of the lot, an SFI activist, grew up with the village’s journey through much limelight and then oblivion. He raises more questions than answers: How did the authorities license a water guzzler in a farm belt perennially in need of water for drinking and irrigation? He is right. It takes 3.8 litres of water to produce one litre of beverage and it was no secret that six bore-wells were working overtime. Every time elections come, ‘RBC’ is a recurring promise - the Right Bank irrigation Canal that remains incomplete. From where does water come to the several water-intensive units in the vicinity? He is right again. There are six distilleries, two breweries, 12 mineral water units in the neighbourhood, with approved water sourcing, says a 2010 study. Then what went wrong here alone? He tries to answer this one: “Perhaps parties wanted the job-giving factory to stay with the option to raise the water issue whenever it suited them. They hadn’t bargained for the big ecological activism that overtook them. Finally no golden egg and no goose.” If nothing else, the Coke experiment has shaped a sharp political mind. However there are signs of a new lazy politics. From across the border a mere 5 km away, Amma’s party AIADMK has a candidate here, N Mayilsamy, and he is drawing surprise crowds. Having missed out on industrialisation, is the village looking at a laid-back freebies model? WATCH INDIAN EXPRESS VIDEOS HERE
