Comment

The news is not good. Following the discovery of high levels of pesticides in cola drinks in the country, NGOs have found even deadlier contaminants in a drink that is consumed throughout India in quantities greater than the leading colas combined.

The findings show that this drink contained harmful elements far above WHO standards. For instance: Aldrin: 0 to 0.078 ppb (parts per billion) against WHO’s prescribed limit of 0.030 ppb. Dieldrin: 0 to 0.091ppb (WHO standard: 0.030 ppb). Other harmful substances found in the drink were DDT, Lindane and Endosulfan. No statistics are available about the quantity of this drink consumed in the country, though estimates suggest the figure could be at least 1 billion litres a day, which is several hundred times the consumption of Coke, Pepsi, Thums Up, Seven Up, Mirinda, Lemonade, Limca, Fanta, etc, combined. Yet none of the seven state governments which have initiated action against the soft drinks manufacturers — not even Kerala, which has banned colas completely — have even contemplated action against this drink.

As you must have already guessed, that dangerous drink is water, and almost every Indian drinks a heavily polluted form of it every single day of his or her life. Many die of diseases carried by it, and certainly most Indians fall terribly sick from time to time because of it. Yet, not a murmur against it. But what a storm in the C (cola) cup!

If you look at photographs of our politicians, or catch their video clips, you will find that their mouths are always open.That’s because it’s a politician’s reflex action to speak at the sight of a mike, a camera or an audience, even if it’s an audience of one. The Open Mouth Syndrome is such that it’s accompanied by a complete absence of thought.
Why else would politicians froth at the mouth and want stringent action against soft drink manufacturers and not say a word about the ground realities of our water supply?

Those ground realities are appalling, to say the least. India may be shining for you and me, but 60 percent of our countrymen do not have running water in their homes, and as many as 30 percent of households have to trudge long distances to get water from a common community source. The worst statistic, though, is this: One million children do not reach the age of five because they die of water-borne diseases.

This column isn’t by any means a defence of the soft drinks industry. Soft drinks, by their very nature of being carbonated sweetened water, are pretty useless nutritionally, while being mildly addictive and mildly harmful, as most consumables with refined sugar are. But then, a lot of what human beings consume has no intrinsic value, and we do not go about banning them.

Commonsense tells us that if soft drinks are contaminated, it’s because of the quality of water available in the country. After all, soft drink manufacturers could not be adding contaminants deliberately; nor could they be adding pesticides to improve the taste of their drinks; Common sense further tells us that the bad quality of water would contaminate most food produce: vegetables and fruit, not only because they grow in the same earth as ground water, but because they are also continuously sprayed by pesticides. Animal feed, too, is affected, so milk as well as meats would necessarily be contaminated.

Would we consume more vegetables, meats, dairy products and meats than colas? Obviously, yes. Has anyone done a study of contaminants in our daily food basket? If not, are the colas being attacked because they are a soft target? Would someone tell us how many bottles of Coke we need to consume per day for it to be harmful? After all, the measure for contaminants is parts per billion. That seems like an awfully small quantity, so one needs to know whether one bottle per day is harmful. Or ten. Or hundred.

Whatever the figure, what the cola furore has achieved is to divert the debate from two very real issues. The first, already mentioned, is the abysmal quality and distribution of water, which in the 21st century and 60 years after independence, is a disgrace. The second is a national policy on pesticide/fungicide usage, defined limits of permissible contaminants, and how to enforce the standards once they are formulated.

Both these issues, important for our health, are complex and difficult to deal with. Which is precisely why shouting about colas is good for the politician’s health.