Krista’s research on Coca-Cola is proceeding according to her hopes.
The research, as I have mentioned before, is that a Coca-Cola manufacturing and bottling facility near Varanasi is taking ground watch such that local farmers have none for their crops. Also the plant is accused of not maintaining the law’s requisite percentage of full-time permanent employees, of occupying village real estate, and of polluting the land.
I know little of any of this, but I have my presuppositions.
A farmer who is lacking in water or whose well has dried has yet to be found in the area. I suspect that Coca-Cola is following the law to the letter on this issue because they have an international image to maintain.
Coca-Cola likely has hired temporary workers, but not knowingly. The way business works here is that the boss takes a cut of every employees salary, so everyone works for less than what records say except for management, who make lots more. Also workers are frequently fired in favor of the huge surplus of other willing laborers who want their jobs. Every new worker takes the identity of an old worker, so it looks like the original workers are still on payroll. Since cash payment is expected, there is no papertrail. A day’s wage is about $1.25 and no one is educated so there is no collaboration or unionization. Almost all workers are Bihari, meaning they travelled hundreds of miles looking for jobs like these.
I seriously doubt that there is anything illegal about the real estate. There is talk that the village panchayat (local politicians) sold the land to Coca Cola in exchange for bribes, but still, the Panchayat had the right to sell the land anyway and the bribes probably have a legal cover, like paying the panchayat to do research on implications. To me, it is the panchayat who broke the law, and not Coca Cola.
Coca-Cola may have polluted the land at one time but I doubt it. It is too easy to trace this.
I have no reservations about saying that Coca-Cola is unethical, immoral, bad for society, oppressive, imperialistic, or evil. I will not argue with such assertions. But I do not want anyone to tell me that they discovered some legal flaw in Coca-Cola’s paperwork. Anyone who says that Coca-Cola does not spend enough money on lawyers must be mistaken. This is not explicitly what Krista says, but this is how I interpret her words. She is a smart girl and I wish I could understand her, but this is as far as I get.
There is this guy in the village, Nandalal Masters with a group called Lok Samiti, who is getting foreign funding to fight Coke. On the records, he gets Rs 15000 a month and his wife gets Rs 5000 a month as salary. The average monthly pay in the village for a working man is probably about Rs 600-800, and women who make money just do not exist here. Nandalal does not speak English and Nandan says that he also speaks neither Hindi nor Bhojpuri – he speaks as one who lives around two languages and is unable to differentiate them.
When I went and met him, he offered namkeen. When the namkeen was finished, he touched a grain of salt on the plate and licked it from his finger. He then repeated the process (touching, licking) until the plate was cleared of salt. Nandan makes the connection between this behaviour and a lack of education.
Nandalal is all over google and is popular in the “westerners-should-save-India-from-globalization circuit.” Nandan is highly doubtful that the villagers have a real interest in human rights, women’s rights, anti-corporate policy, or any number of the other buzzwords that they drop but cannot explain. I think that Nandalal is a “thesis-wala.” The word “wala” here can mean, “the man who sells something.” To me, Nandalal seems an uneducated punk who attracts foreigners with a non-extant problem in hopes that they will write a paper on it saying that it exists.
Based on the number of foreigners that have been through Nandalal’s house just in the time since I have been here, I would guess that Nandal makes several lakh (hundred thousand) rupees a year which should go to his campaign. Nandan told me that one of the villagers told him that Nandalal gave money to anyone who talked about Lok Samiti and that he and his boys coach people on what to say. Also he has told me that Nandalal has asked him to get a copy machine or money from Krista. Some other lady at Nandalal’s house has asked for the same.
Krista seems to me strangely prejudiced toward Nandalal and as such, I do not think that she wants to hear anything bad about him. Nandan thinks that if he tells Krista about these things now then she will be uncomfortable and not want to work with him as translator anymore. I agree with him. I think if he did say everything that people told him about Nandalal then she would not trust Nandan anymore. I have not talked to Nandan about this issue – it is not appropriate for me to even discuss this due to Krista being his guest, his employer, and friend. I think that the truth will come out when she gets translations long after she is gone, and then it will be up to her whether she wants to state that some local people oppose Nandalal or if she, as so many other English speaking kids have done, only reports what supports the side opposing Coca Cola.
Undoubtedly such data massaging happens in the hard sciences as well, but from talking with Krista I think she has the idea that if her research does not make a conclusion about one side being almost all good and the other being almost all bad then she will think of her work as failed. I think both sides are likely to be evil, and if it were my work I would argue as such.