Pepsi, Coke contain pesticides, so keep guzzling them with Amitabh, Shah Rukh, Sachin and Aamir
In a global survey of top hundred brands done by Business Week, Coca-Cola topped the list of beverage brands and Pepsi came 22nd. Fair enough, but what is unfair is the ease with which these global giants flout norms, or exploit the lack of it, in the emerging market of India.
Three years after a ruckus in the country over high pesticide levels in various brands of these softdrink majors, which turned out to be a sham and culminated in the formation of a parliamentary committee, 57 samples of 11 soft drink brands from 25 plants spread across 12 states found a cocktail of three to five pesticides in them.
The contamination levels were almost 24 times more than that stipulated by the Bureau of Indian Standards. So much for exhaustive statistics.
The point here is that this could not happen anywhere except this dumping ground called India, where celebrity Bollywood stars would shamelessly fall for the megabucks thrown to them as peanuts by the cola majors to vociferously endorse them.
Aamir Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and all those star brand ambassadors can’t care a damn about the alarming insensitivity of these multinational killers. They can’t see through the game because the Greenback has blurred their vision. So don’t think they will stop endorsing colas to our tiny tots. They can’t.
A top health ministry official’s letter to consumer affairs secretary sums up the officialdom’s stand: Bureau of Indian Standards should sit over the standards for beverages it has come up with, till an expert committee deliberates the issue.
Now, everyone knows how expert panels and parliamentary committees work.
Cola majors have just bribed the decision making structure and the opinion makers throughout the country en masse to carry on with impunity the process of exploiting the country’s vast resources and tapping its huge domestic market, with scant regard to universally acceptable norms.
For those who defend the Colas for the sake defending, just think what would have happened in the US or European Union if such a study were to come out?
They will just be banished. That they know and hence they will stick to standards there.
No need to go by that yardstick in India as they could soon gift wrap the colas with the skin of celebrities and the venom of babudom to adorn your neighbourhood shop. Cheers. Amen.
