VS leads stir against cola giant

Former Chief Minister and Administrative Reforms Commission Chairman V.S. Achuthanandan on Friday called upon the residents of water-starved Pudussery grama panchayat here to engage in a relentless agitation against the bottling plant of aerated drinks major Pepsico India in their locality and set a model for the rest of the world in fighting corporate plundering of water resources.

He was inaugurating a people’s parliament organised by the local unit of the CPI(M) in front of the main gate of the bottling plant, demanding its immediate closure against the backdrop of severe water scarcity faced by the Pudussery region.

Addressing the mammoth gathering, Mr. Achuthanandan said Palakkad was launching yet another water war on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the closure of a bottling plant of another aerated drinks major, Coca-Cola, at Perumatty in the close vicinity of Pudussery. He hoped that Pudussery would replicate the intense public agitation at Plachimada that resulted in the permanent closure of the Coca-Cola bottling unit.

A large number of local residents, including women and children, attended the parliament, which highlighted the extreme scarcity of drinking water in Pudussery because of a failed monsoon and an impending drought. “The bottling plant is plundering water resources of the panchayat area while residents of Chullimada, Attappallam and Walayar in Pudussery are walking kilometres daily to fetch drinking water. The company is not even ready to respond to the notices issued by the grama panchayat seeking explanation for over extraction of groundwater,” he said.

K. Unnikrishnan, grama panchayat president, said Pepsico India was drawing nearly 6.5 to 15 lakh litres of groundwater a day though it had been given permission only to use 2.4 lakh litres daily. “The company is using ten borewells of over six inches in diameter for exploiting groundwater. It is not even allowing the government-appointed hydrologists to check the quantity of groundwater sourced by it,” he alleged.

“The company is exploiting groundwater at a time when over 300 borewells of local farmers have turned dry. The panchayat is now depending on tanker lorries for drinking water,” he added. The Pepsi plant, in 53 acres, used nearly 48.5 per cent of the available groundwater in the region,” he said.