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This is an archive article published on August 23, 2006

Bottled-up plans

Cola caution: politics, not public interest, is often served by opposing big companies or big powers

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There’sll now be bottles full of comments, not all of them objective or scientific, on whose science is better: Anbumani Ramadoss’s or Sunita Narain’s. In all the ensuing fizz an interesting and instructive point is likely to get lost. In a country where administrations are notorious for their worship of the sarkari imprimatur, the cola controversy provoked a marked departure. State governments reacted swiftly to assessments by a private body, the CSE, even as the sarkar in New Delhi started its own assessment. Quick official responses meant that now many state governments appear to in effect challenge the Union health ministry’s verdict on CSE procedures. Does this mean, as Arun Shourie has argued in our op-ed pages in the context of the nuclear deal, that informed and individual stakeholders — nuclear scientists in Shourie’s argument and the CSE in this case — have necessarily more credibility? Is it a welcome sign of public debates maturing? Of the stranglehold of sarkari approval loosening?

We wish that were the case. Because objective private challenges to official consensus is always good. But the fact is politics, not pure dissent, is the driver in such cases. Nuclear scientists received a halo because politics had turned up the heat and obscured the fact that atomic establishment is fighting to preserve a status quo that allowed it complete immunity from public scrutiny. Some state governments reacted swiftly to the CSE’s cola report. Being seen to be taking on multinational companies, especially those from America, satisfies a populist urge. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are especially fine targets for such politics. The CSE report provided such an opportunity and state-level politicians didn’t want to do the usual, conservative thing: wait for the Centre’s take on the issue.

Those interested in sober resolutions of public controversies must therefore be as careful in ascribing nobility of purpose to non-government parties as they are to government ones. It is also necessary to understand what one means by terms like national interest or public health. Is allowing a handful of nuclear scientists to dictate foreign policy in national interest? Are populist bans on the manufacture of colas in India in national interest, given that Indian businesses may attract similar populist action abroad? Are such bans even relevant to public health, given that far more serious and immediate threats receive little activist or official attention? Why should opposing big powers or big corporates confer an automatic certificate of credibility?

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