• The alarming presence of hazardous pesticides in our environment poses a problem no different from such ills as fake medicines and food products. As you have said in your article, the real shock of this cola episode is the fact that now we have an estimate of the amount of poison in our desi drinks and drinking water, not to mention agricultural products. What we need are urgent, effective legislations to control pesticide use.— C S Babu• The vegetables we consume, the water we drink, and not to mention the colas, are all laced with excess traces of pesticides. The epidemic proportion that diabetes mellitus, heart attacks and malignancies have achieved in our country are a result of our greedy use of pesticides. A scientist in NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute) based in Nagpur has shown how pesticides destroy the DNA of certain cells. The spurt in the rise of these diseases started a decade or two after the so-called ‘‘Green Revolution’’. I am now convinced we need to go back to organic farming to restore the health of our people and of our farms.— Dr K P Hardas• I find Shekhar Gupta’s article boycott lunch and breakfast a bit supercilious. While conceding the point that our environment is dangerously polluted by pesticides, how can we absolve the MNCs from their responsibility to ensure that they use only clean water for their hyper-advertised products? I might also point out that the campaign against the colas is much older than the discovery of pesticides in their bottles. It is a larger campaign against the replacement of healthier traditional local products by these junk foods. It is also against the inroads the MNCs are making into our food habits and consumption habits with the help of high-pressure advertising. The revelation by the CSE is only incidental, albeit highly opportune.— R V G Menon• Though I appreciate Shekhar Gupta for a well-balanced column, as a student of chemistry, I would like to mention that it is also fashionable nowadays not only in India but also abroad to blame it on technology and science. In the case of pesticides, we must note that it was because of these first and second generation pesticides of organochlorine (like DDT) and organophosphorous (like monocrotophous), many third world countries could reduce malaria to a great extent. But in time we hit upon the negative side of these. Thus came the third-generation pesticides with pyrethroids and also GM seeds (avoiding pesticides).— Vallinayagam• You concluded the piece exhorting the ministries concerned to adopt stringent regulatory measures. As a public health professional with 21 years of experience with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in a number of developing countries including India, let me inform you that it is a very tall order for the Ministry of Health to take a meaningful role in collaboration with other ministries. Our country suffers from a crippling shortage of schools of public health. Every medical college here — with few exceptions in recent years — has a small department of social and preventive medicine which exists at the low end of the medical totem pole with regard to funds, personnel and prestige. After many years of efforts, in October 2002, a Centre of Public Health was established in the Panjab University. This should in due course develop into a full-fledged Department of Public Health with hopefully ‘twinning’ arrangement with a reputed school of public health in the USA. The big question: Will the Union Government provide an enabling grant of Rs 5 crore, i.e. 1/50th of the amount spent on establishing the medical college in Chandigarh.— Dr. Satnam Singh, (Hony. Advisor), PU Centre of Public Health• Three most directly responsible bodies for the pesticide mess is missing from your list of ministries: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Central Ground Water Authority that has been given the power under the EPA 1986 and Ministry of Water Resources under which Central Ground Water Board functions and similar bodies at state level. You do not even mention the pollution control boards, the only authority that has the resources and powers to monitor and tell us about the pollution levels in our environment and also take action. In your zest in criticising NGOs, one actor you have understandably missed is the media. Why did the media take one-and-half years to take note of the protests that affected people of Palakkad in Kerala have being doing for the destruction of their groundwater by the Coke factory? Why has the media not done any investigation or stories of pumping of toxic chemicals into the groundwater by industries just around Delhi? Even when Haryana Pollution Control Board advertised in newspapers, including The Indian Express, ‘‘threatening’’ to take action against such polluters?— Himanshu Thakkar• I have read with great deal of concern and sadness your piece titled Boycott Lunch and Dinner. Just your belief that CSE is the most constructive, thorough and effective NGO leads you to believe that the findings based on some analysis carried out by them in their lab, which is not certified or accredited are good enough to reach the conclusion, that ‘‘soft drinks contains poison, for which to make the irony doubly cruel, they charge money’’.In order to draw attention to the issue of use of pesticides in our agriculture and their impact on food products — can an NGO run a slander campaign against large brands or is it a case if the intentions are good, any means, however dubious, they may be, can be, adopted — especially when the affected parties are multinationals?The results of water used in the manufacture of our beverages at all our plants has been repeatedly shown to the media and are available in public domain. They clearly show that we are well within the EU norms as per the reports of reputed and accredited national and international labs. Should this important fact, not be taken into account before reaching any definitive conclusion?Should an NGO be given a license to tarnish the reputation of major companies in complete defiance to the principles of natural justice by appointing themselves as investigator, prosecutor and the judge and inciting the mobs on the street with media’s frenzied support to dispense justice?Another issue is that the definition of ‘‘Unacceptably High Pesticide Residues’’ — unacceptable to the human body based on toxicological impact, health and safety considerations based on WHO guidelines or as per EU norms. EU standards, which are designed primarily to restrict entry of food products from third world countries to the EU, need to be contested rather than used as a benchmark to define health and safety agenda for the country. Adoption of such standards on wholesale basis will spell disaster for the Indian farmer and food processing industry. However, a much bigger issue than this is to create a false panic and alarm in the minds of the consumer, by presenting the data as a poison index based on suspect testing methods and questionable standards. If the report has affected you enough to write this piece, imagine the plight of an average consumer on his dietary intake.— Rajeev Bakshi, Chairman, PepsiCo India• In the article Boycott lunch and dinner, you have made a reference to a wine shipment coming back from Europe, which I don’t believe is correct. I recall an earlier news item that appeared in The Indian Express that it was a shipment of table grapes which had been rejected and finally was diverted to Russia with some help from the Ministry of Agriculture. You have quoted an officer in the Agriculture Ministry which would support my contention because wine is handled by the Ministry of Food Processing.— Kapil Grover, Director (Grover Vineyards)
