India's Storm in a Cola Cup

The

release of a new study finding high levels of pesticide in locally bottled sodas had India in an uproar last week, and the outrage fell squarely on Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which boast about 80% of the country's market for soft drinks. The southern state of Kerala has issued an order banning Coke and Pepsi products, while five other states barred soft drinks from public hospitals, government offices and the areas around schools. Nationalist groups burned soda bottles and fed the drinks to donkeys in protest.

But Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the New Delhi-based NGO that conducted the research, says the hullabaloo misses the point. "This wasn't supposed to be about Coke and Pepsi," she says. "Our fight is with the government." In 2003 the CSE published a similar report to agitate for quality standards for soft drinks to match those for milk, baby food and bottled water. Rules have since been drawn up by the Indian Bureau of Standards, but Narain says the government is dragging its feet on their implementation. Last week's study was meant as a reminder that the industry remains unregulated. Instead, it has launched a national debate on everything from pesticide-polluted groundwater (the source of the residues in bottled soda, which the CSE says are up to 140 times above safety levels) to middle-class India's addiction to unhealthy, processed foods. "It's wonderful," Narain says. "Pepsi and Coke are doing our work for us. Now the whole nation knows that there is a pesticide problem."

The soft-drink giants are less delighted. Coca-Cola says its drinks have been rigorously tested by independent laboratories and conform to strict quality standards, and both companies have taken out newspaper ads challenging the CSE's research methods and findings. Unconcerned, Narain counters: "We are not in this to prove Pepsi and Coke wrong—and as long as we get those standards, I don't give a damn if they prove me wrong."