Here I sit, back in Canada. Amazing. It all happened so fast. Jet lag renders me alternately sleepy and sleepless for several days. I play with my boys early and late; hit the Internet with Shawn at 3:00 AM one morning, eat midnight snacks with Dan. These grown children are the lovely parts of returning home. Alone, my thoughts drift back to India, my plans for return. As I anticipated, culture shock is not an issue. Westernized Bangalore has me well prepared for Vancouver and Regina, except we have more oversized folks in Canada. A lot more.
My last three weeks in India I solidly connect with the social justice community. Workshops fill my weekends; I meet astonishing academics, community workers and NGO staff. Days and nights are hectic, jammed with more opportunities, more learning, more new thoughts to share. I’ll miss my writing; words traveling alone on the web, winging me emails from home.
Sitting at Dan’s lightening-fast computer, I think about my final post. What to write? If someone asked me to define India’s most pressing problem, I know I’d say vehicular traffic. Speed. Horns. Thoughtless, careless drivers. Accidents and death. Indeed, my life was never more at risk than when crossing a street.
But that was my problem, not India’s. In a partial list of poverty, corruption, lack of housing, patriarchy, unemployment and child labour, the topic of water stands out, previously neglected. It fits well with globalization, another topic I neglected. I offer this last note filled with a deep sense of humility and gratitude that you actually take time to read my stories. You helped me connect to home while I was away and I thank you.
One of my last visits in India is to my friend Paul, who supported me when I confronted the human rights abuses at Nineteen Twelve, so long ago. We talk about globalization. He says globalization promises prosperity to everyone, but delivers to a select few. In spite of its promises, it seems unable or unwilling to confront poverty and so exacerbates the inequality between the very rich and the achingly poor. In fact, he says, multi-nationals create poverty. In the case of Coke and Pepsi, the companies drain the bore wells, empty the rivers, siphon off all the groundwater, pollute the land with chemical contaminants, then shift their destructive forces a fresh new location. Farmers, agricultural workers, small business owners and their families must move on, the dispossessed, the displaced, the dislocated.
Protesters in Kerala, some who have stood against Coke in other locations for more than two years, had a recent victory. Early in 2004, after totally depleting the water supply at one site, Coke applied to tap into another water supply. Tribal people, agricultural workers and villagers banded together to stop them; human rights defenders from all over India traveled to assist with the agitation. Eventually the case went to the High Court, who ruled in favour of the tribal and village people. A defeat for Coca-Cola many hope will pave the way for the next defeat, and the next.
For this is a huge victory. Government policy makers and open-handed officials are easy prey for these multi-nationals, who wield awesome political influence and command unlimited resources. In the face of protestors who point to contaminated ground water and parched agricultural land, they lobby for less stringent government policies, increased profits, token taxes. In one case, when a panchayat or village government in Tamil Nadu threatened to cancel Coke's license, the company went to the High Court and ‘demonstrated’ that there was ‘no evidence of over-exploitation of groundwater reserves in the villages’. And won.
Chemical contaminants and effluent pose huge risks for people in villages, who may be poor but are far from stupid. They know the chemical waste pouring out of the Coke or Pepsi plant brings environmental degradation and disease. Villagers claim that wastes entering one canal from a Kerala plant killed two cows and almost two dozen sheep. The foul sludge from the plant spoiled the canal water for any human use.
On the street, not enough people in India seem worried about the impact of globalization. Indeed, many view multi-nationals as creators of employment, not exploiters of cheap labour. People share a certain fatalism, a sense that globalization is not really the answer to poverty, but what is the alternative? There is a vague sense that social security for the really poor will offset the losses faced by agricultural workers and tribal workers. This hope is bolstered by the new Congress government; promises to improve rice distribution, reduce loan interest, streamline access to education, provide 100 days of employment each year.
How about not destroying the employment options currently available, I wonder? And repeat a couple of stories I’ve heard. Near Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, there is a river called the Palar. Palar means ‘milk’, the River of Milk. Nourishing. Natural. A Pepsi plant set up beside the Palar River, drained it, then sucked out all the groundwater. Pepsi destroyed the ecosystem and the agricultural base. No wonder, it gobbled 2 million litres of water every day. But it employed 300 people.
And sent thousands upon thousands of agricultural workers and their families to the slums in Chennai, clutching their meager possessions, leaving behind homes and one-time work. Pepsi, of course, denies responsibility for their pain and loss. And, these companies are supported by many local authorities, who still argue for the job creation possibilities of Coke and Pepsi.
Here is another story, this time from my travels in Kerala. Five years ago a Coke plant set up and drew 1.5 million liters of water everyday, using dozens of bore wells. Bore wells use electricity to pull the water out - imagine the electrical needs of a Coke or Pepsi plant. So the village, and thousands like it across India, suffers prolonged blackouts when people cannot draw water for irrigation or household use. The lights stay on at the plant, of course. Drawing 1.5 million litres of water every day parched the lands of more than 2000 people who lived within two kilometers of the factory. They no longer farm.
On my Backwater Tour, I heard of another village that regularly produced more than fifty bags of rice and around 1,500 coconuts a year. Dozens of agricultural workers were employed. Then Coke came in and set up a bottling plant. Now the harvest yields almost five sacks of rice and about 200 coconuts. Irrigation wells have run dry. Dried up farms have closed. The estimated number of unemployed agricultural workers in the area is ten thousand people.
And the macabre turn in this tale? The plant bottles mineral water for tourists and foreigners. The local people certainly can’t afford Rs.12 for a bottle of mineral water, and under normal circumstances they wouldn’t need bottled water. Now, it would be useful. With all the water gone from the wells, women walk as far as ten kilometers a day - every day – sometimes twice a day – for drinking and household water. Water is women’s work. The men lost their jobs, families lost their water and everyone lost their way of life. But somewhere there’s another plant setting up, promising jobs, denying responsibility.
Not surprisingly, it’s been brought to my attention that the last few posts are a bit bleak. Indeed, this is true. It doesn’t mean I was having less fun in India, it only means I was learning more. I can find no superlatives adequate to describe my travels, friends, experiences, insights, and those great jazz gigs in India. Recently, I was asked to sing with a band. Wisely, I declined. My life during the last six months was filled with opportunity, and I look forward to picking up those threads of possibility when I return to travel the northern states of India. Maybe you'll journey with me? Jane
