The Anti-Coca-Cola Movement in Plachimada,Kerala

Introduction

In the current political and economic practice, the so-called free market plays a hegemonic role over all other institutions. In Harvey’s view, the three most important features of contemporary neoliberal capitalism are “deregulation, privatization, and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision” (Harvey, 2005, p. 3). Neoliberalism rose to predominance in the United States of America and Europe during the mid-1970s, but a fundamental transition in Indian economic policies toward neoliberalism did not take place until the early 1990s (Ahluwalia & Little, 1998; Kannan, 2014; Kurian, 1994; Patnaik, 1997; The World Bank, 1995). The proponents of neoliberal economic policies argued that India needed to embrace this approach to overcome the macro and microeconomic conditions responsible for the crisis the country encountered in the late 1980s. These conditions were conceived as a great impediment to the economic growth and “development logic of industrialization through capital accumulation” (Chakrabarti & Cullenberg, 2003, pp. 239–240), and the transition of India from a country where the economy was regulated by the state to an economy with free market supremacy.

Scholars like Kurian (1994) and Kannan (2014) discussed the ramifications of the neoliberal reforms on the poor in India and highlighted the rise in rural poverty in the post-reform period. In India, the post-economic liberalization period denotes an unprecedented seizure of land from the poor by the state for establishing “development” projects such as special economic zones (SEZ), IT parks, mines, dams, infrastructure, highways, power plants etc. As a result, India witnessed various forms of collective action against the state during this period, and especially against its efforts to protect the interests of the global capitalism. A conventional reading of the capitalist accumulation is inadequate to understand the complex ways in which capital is operating in the neoliberal global capitalist as well as the postcolonial Indian capitalist contexts. In an attempt to understand this complexity, this article focuses on the Anti-Coca-Cola movement (popularly known as the “Plachimada movement”) in Kerala, India.

This movement arose in Plachimada ¹ against Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited (hereafter HCCBPL) in Perumatty panchayat (village council area) in the Palakkad district of Kerala. Initially, it was centered on the issue of the local pollution and the scarcity of water that resulted from the establishment of the Coca-Cola Company’s bottling plant in 2000. The movement was initiated by an amalgamation of various organizations and social actors. The establishment of this plant also dispossessed the local adivasis ² in Plachimada from their agricultural land and deprived them of their livelihood. Like elsewhere in the country, the destruction of the common people’s livelihood (predominantly based on agriculture) in Plachimada is another instance of development-induced dispossession that negatively affected the lives of marginalized communities in India since the beginning of 1990 (Kothari, 1996; Mathur & Marsden, 1998; Mehta, 2009; Oliver-Smith, 2010).

This movement has particular features in the configuration as a contemporary social movement, which have been discussed in previous studies (Berglund & Helander, 2015; Bijoy, 2006; Mooney 2012; Raman, 2005, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2010a, 2010b). For example, an article published in this journal by Berglund and Helander (2015) focused on the significance of civil society and analyzed the effects of the movement’s campaign on the political participation of its members. Unlike this, the present article goes beyond the existing social movement theories to analyze the complex interface between the “local” and the “global” in the Plachimada movement. Plachimada is a “local” space located within the regional space of the state of Kerala, which is known widely for its people-centered approach to development and the so-called “Kerala model of development.” ³ The article examines the reassemblage of the “local” in the context of a contemporary social movement and the relational contexts framed by the theoretical conceptualizations of neoliberalism, global corporate capitalism, and postcolonial capitalist development.

The next section of this article offers a brief account of the methodological approach followed in the study. In the following section, this article examines the historical trajectory of the Plachimada movement. The third section of this article contextualizes the Plachimada movement historically and politically and explains how the developmental state of Kerala and the multinational company together identified and transformed the locality of Plachimada into site for industrial production. The subsequent section discusses the arrival of global capital, the manifestation of the Coca-Cola Company, and analyzes their appropriation of local land as a form of “accumulation by dispossession.” In section five, the marginality of the adivasis in Plachimada is critically examined using the concept of the “wasteland” that has been created by a global capitalist enterprise. In the final section, the article argues that the idea of the “local” is not a pre-given entity, rather the construction of a new local—which is termed as “critical locality”—resulted through an interface characterized as both antagonistic on the one hand, and collaborative on the other, with global.

Methodological Approach

The term “discourse” suggests a “structure in which meaning is constantly negotiated and constructed” (Laclau, 1988, p. 254). As social and political contexts play a significant role in creating the meaning of social practices, each discourse is defined as “a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorizations that are produced, reproduced, and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities” (Hajer, 1995, p. 44). Drawing on this methodology, this article looks at various internal descriptions constituted in the context of the Plachimada movement.

The internal descriptions include all kinds of articulations such as statements, opinions, and observations of the social actors associated with this movement. It also makes a scrutiny of documents such as charter of demands, pamphlets, handouts, notices, articles published by the leaders of the movement in vernacular and national daily newspapers, magazines, court judgments, and statements offered by the Coca-Cola authorities. Archives of Malayalam monthly magazine Keraleeyam was an important empirical source of this study. In addition to this, primary data has been collected through semi-structured interviews from leaders and participants of the movements in two phases (each phase continued of 6 months between the years 2010 and 2015).

Plachimada Movement: A Brief History

A group of adivasis and the local people in Plachimada, with the support of various civil society organizations, began the agitation against the bottling unit of HCCBPL on April 22, 2002. The bottling unit of Coca-Cola in Plachimada was established in March 2000 on 38 acres, constituting mostly multi-cropped agricultural land. With a total investment of around ₹560 million, the company prepared to produce their soft drink brands including Coca-Cola, Fanta, Limca, Thums-up, Maaza, and Kinley Soda. ⁴ By January 2002, pollution of drinking water had become a severe problem and the local people started complaining that it resulted from the establishment of the Coca-Cola plant. However, neither political parties and state institutions, nor managers of the Coca-Cola plant were willing to take it as a serious concern. At this juncture, people—particularly adivasis who inhabited the nearest locality to the plant—seriously considered an agitation against the plant. They got in touch with the local social workers and shared their concerns and asserted that there was no other way than to engage in agitation. Subsequently, they mobilized the local adivasis and started the agitation at a small scale. ⁵ The primary goal of the agitation in the beginning was restrained to getting clean drinking water.

The agitation got impetus when scientific evidences about the pollution of the water as a consequence of the operation of the plant were produced by civil society organizations. Two important studies were carried out on the pollution of the drinking water in the backdrop of the people’s complaints regarding the quality of water before launching the movement in a systematically organized fashion. Both reports ⁶ emphasized that the Coca-Cola factory created serious environmental problems in the area of Plachimada (Chandran, 2002 cited in Koonan, 2010; Jayaraman, 2002). In April 2002, three organizations—the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Haritha Development Association (hereafter HDA), ⁷ and Adivasi Samrakshana Sangam (Adivasi Protection Association)—jointly gave a notice to the Coca-Coca plant cautioning that if they failed to resolve the problem of pollution in the adjacent areas of the company, people would start agitation against the plant. As the management of the plant did not respond sympathetically to their demands, local residents, mainly adivasis, began the agitation with the support of Adivasi Samrakshana Sangam, HDA, and PUCL by demanding that Coca-Cola should close down the plant in Plachimada and provide compensation for the pollution.

In May 2002, they constituted the Coca-Cola Virudha Samara Samithi (Anti-Coca-Cola Agitation Council, hereafter CCVSS) for seeking the participation of people from the larger society other than direct victims who are adivasis. At the beginning, it was only a blockade in front of the main gate of the bottling plant but gradually they devised other ways of protest. CCVSS adopted different forms of agitations which included picketing, public meetings, and marches. With the support of civil society organizations, they constituted solidarity committees at the district and state level to seek help from the wider society and strengthen the agitation. Later, the media and several national and international civil society organizations recognized the momentousness of the problem. In discussing the effects of participation in the Plachimada movement, Berglund and Helander (2015) arrived at the conclusion that these kinds of social movements have a “potentially important role to play in mobilizing the political awareness and participation of disadvantaged groups.” Further, they argued that “by empowering individuals lacking in individual resources, political activism can lead to an increased equality in participation, thereby strengthening democracy” (Berglund & Helander, 2015, pp. 20–21). The following words of Mayilamma, ⁸ an adivasi woman and leader of the Plachimada movement, are an exemplar of this individual empowerment through political activism in the Plachimada movement. She said:

We are fighting for the right to get water for drinking and bathing. Nobody is supporting the attempts to pollute the drinking water and its excessive extraction even in terms of employment preservation. It not only affects the present generation but it will create difficulties for the future generation. We never expected that the company will create this much problem when they started functioning. Water has become contaminated and unusable for drinking and bathing within six months after the establishment of the company. Indeed, this is a fight against these types of companies in Kerala that are denying the basic right of the people for getting water. (Keraleeyam, 2005, p. 18)

There was a shift in the main demand of the movement—from settling the water shortage and pollution to permanently closing down the factory and seeking compensation from them. Also, they demanded that the state initiate legal proceedings against the company at the earliest. In 2010, after the agitation completed eight years, the Kerala state government finally decided to establish a tribunal to judge the compensation claims of people affected by the activities of the Coco-Cola factory at Plachimada. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala led by Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan (between 2006 and 2011) set up a legal inquiry to assess the actual compensation for every applicant. It was for the first time in the political history of the state that such a tribunal was formed to offer compensation to victims of industrial pollution.

In the meantime, the High-Power Committee (HPC) ⁹ had come out with a report which explained that they had compelling evidence from several studies (conducted by legislative committees, the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee, scientific bodies as well as civil rights groups and concerned individuals) to reach the following concluding observations:

Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Ltd. has caused serious depletion of the water resources of Plachimada, and has severely contaminated the water and soil. Water resources were severely polluted by lethal heavy metals contained in the toxic sludge generated by the company. A substantial part of Plachimada’s soil has also been polluted by the hazardous sludge illegally discharged by the company on the land of unsuspecting farmers. The company is obviously liable to pay compensation, for the heavy damages they have caused to the natural resources of the area…. It is evident that the damages caused by the Coca-Cola factory at Plachimada have created a host of social, economic, health and ecological problems, cutting across different sectors. (Government of Kerala, 2010)

The committee took the view that when the use of property of one person causes harm to the life and property rights of the adjoining owner(s), the liability under tort law is invoked and the victim is entitled to compensation. In this specific case, the calculated overall money value of the damage caused by the Coca-Cola unit was ₹2.1626 billion, an amount that could be claimed as reasonable compensation. Thus, the Kerala Legislative Assembly passed the Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal Bill, 2011 (hereafter Plachimada Tribunal Bill) on February 24, 2011, to secure the interests of the inhabitants of Plachimada by ensuring the compensation for the ecological damage caused by the Coca-Cola unit that had functioned in the village until 2004. Afterwards, the Bill was sent to the Union Ministry in order to get the assent of the president of India. In the meantime, CCVSS and Plachimada Solidarity Committee carried out a march to the HCCBPL unit at Plachimada—where operations were suspended in 2004. This march took place on August 25, 2011, and they hoisted a flag on the premises and declared that they had symbolically occupied the company. After receiving the Bill, the Union Home Ministry asked for several clarifications from the Kerala state government, particularly concerned with the state’s competence to enact such a piece of legislation. Finally, in 2015, the central government returned the bill back to the state by arguing that the state government did not have constitutional right to enact such a bill.

Although the Coca-Cola unit in Plachimada suspended its operations in March 2004, the movement was very active until 2010 to accomplish the demands that were raised. But later on, it slowed down its activities and protests. In this regard, several activists pointed out that it is not an easy task to keep the momentum of a social movement for more than 10 years on a single issue. Internal differences within the social movement actors regarding matters such as the success of the movement, future course of action, etc., played a crucial role in weakening the movement. A significant number of actors believed that the Plachimada Tribunal Bill was a historic achievement and they wanted to wait to get the assent from the President of India. The movement was now sustained by registering some symbolic protests to pressure the state government to get the Plachimada Tribunal Bill approved by the central government. The Plachimada movement acquired national and international attention as an adivasi as well as an environmental movement, but there is no active movement at present.

Plachimada as a Site of Industrial Production and the Discourses on Development

This section attempts to complicate the foregoing descriptive account of the establishment of HCCBPL by situating it in a larger historical and political context and in relation to factors such as agrarian crisis, economic reforms, and the notion and practice of development through industrialization. In some ways, all these factors are associated with the larger phenomenon of neoliberalism. The dominant discourse on development is framed in relation to the idea of neoliberalism in the country since the 1990s, but Kerala as a regional state did not embrace any neoliberal reforms during this period. However, many scholars shared their concerns about the sustainability of this development model (Heller, 1999; Oommen, 1993; Parayil, 2000; Ramachandran, 1997) and critically reflected on the country’s economic crisis. The alarming rate of unemployment, low income generation, poor investment in many economic sectors, and the stagnant material production are some of the crisis-ridden factors which adversely affected the economic growth of Kerala.

At this juncture, an International Congress on Kerala Studies (hereafter ICKS) was organized under the auspices of the AKG Centre for Research and Studies. This center reported that “there is a growing feeling that a new agenda responsive to the changed reality needs to be drawn up so that the new challenges can be met, the progressive heritage preserved, and the cultural and material life of the people further improved” (Isaac & Tharakan, 1995, p. 1993). The focus of the discussion at ICKS “was more on the contemporary crisis and the possible solution rather than on the much acclaimed achievements of the past” (Isaac & Tharakan, 1995, p. 1995). It emphasized that a new agenda was needed for achieving the future development of Kerala, while acknowledging that it is impossible to design a paradigm of development which is totally independent from the development policy of the central government, particularly in the post reform period.

Most of the deliberations indicated that at the beginning of the 1990s a huge amount of pressure was placed on the state to overcome its “development crisis,” and Jeromi (2005) observed that the state lagged behind by almost a decade compared to the reforms initiated by the central government. When the Left Front government was in power during 1996–2001, stimulating private investment and diversifying the industrial base were the two measures adopted for resolving this crisis. The coming of HCCBPL to Kerala can be linked to these expounded transitions and policy shifts. The Coca-Cola representatives revealed this fact before the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) stating that “the company came in at the specific request from LDF government… It was promised all infrastructure facilities, power, and water” (cited in Nair, Paul, & Menon, 2008, p. 117). Surprisingly, the LDF government proposed its initiative for industrial development and economic growth without considering the environmental concerns and impacts. Therefore, it is possible to argue that this developmental process led to the capitalist appropriation of natural resources including land and water by the multinational company, and the local resistance revolved around this exploitation. This recent capitalist appropriation is connected to the entry of global capital taking advantage of the possibility opened up by neoliberal reforms and neoliberal ideas about development.

Advent of Global Capital and “Accumulation by Dispossession”

It is pertinent to begin this section by recounting two narrations from the field research about the appropriation of local land by the Coca-Cola Company for establishing their plant in Plachimada. One of the women agitators observed:

Coca-Cola plant is now situated in the agricultural land of our big land owner, Thambi Ravuthar. We, the people near this village are engaged in agricultural activities in this land both day and night. There was reasonably good employment available in this area. In the meantime, Thambi Ravuthar fell into a deep debt, and in order to resolve that crisis he sold the land. Before leaving the place he told us not to worry with the loss of agricultural land since a big company is coming here and all of us will get jobs. Unfortunately, the company has come but we did not get job, including the educated youth in this locality. Most of the laborers appointed in the company are outsiders and rest of them are either followers or sympathizers of various political parties. ¹⁰

One of the reporters of Madhyamam, a Malayalam daily, the only vernacular newspaper which published the initial reports on the establishment of the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada prior to launching the agitation, narrated the story of the inception of the factory as follows:

The multinational company Coca-Cola had taken the land during the period 1998–1999 at Plachimada, the area in which the poor and economically impoverished adivasis were densely populated. The company had purchased 33.3 acres of land from 5 different persons in the locality with the help of local real estate brokers. All the land that were paddy fields which was used for cultivating paddy two times a year (Iruppuval) were filled up with sand by Coca-Cola company. We, Mathrubhumi’s Chittur reporter and myself [Madhyamam’s reporter], went there as local reporters to enquire about it. (Das, 2006, pp. 6–7) ¹¹

These two narrations indicate how the Coca-Cola Company appropriated land without exercising much coercive power. In this context, it is significant to look at Harvey’s (2003) critical examination of Marx’s classical idea of “primitive accumulation.” He revisits the basic assumptions upon which the idea of “primitive accumulation” was proposed by Marx. By invoking a critical re-evaluation of these assumptions, Harvey found some serious limitations in applying the same ideas in the current neoliberal context. Thus, he replaced the idea of “primitive” and “original” by using a more appropriate conceptualization that was termed as “accumulation by dispossession.” By referring to Marx, Harvey summarized different processes encompassed in “primitive accumulation” as “colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources)” (Harvey, 2003, p. 145). This is a very interesting theoretical frame for understanding the entry of global capital into Plachimada and the way the Coca-Cola Company appropriated the land. Though Marx only discussed the coercive appropriation of assets, including natural resources, Harvey extended and reformulated that assumption by proposing a more nuanced idea of how a neoliberal economy operates with coercion and non-coercion concurrently in intertwined and complex ways.

In this case, the state government (under the control of the Left Front) invited Coca-Cola to Kerala by ensuring all the support, including providing the necessary infrastructure within legal provisions. Second, Coca-Cola was able to purchase land without using any apparent coercion. Thus, I argue that processes of accumulation took place without the use of any overt power, and therefore it is different from Marx’s notion of the imperial processes of appropriation of assets; Harvey’s conceptualization is more helpful for explaining this case. Here, “accumulation by dispossession” does not mean that adivasis were displaced from their land by coercion, because they were not the legal owners of the land purchased by the Coca-Cola plant. Nonetheless, the adivasis were dispossessed of their access to the land and their livelihoods as agricultural workers on this land. In other words, the local agricultural laborers, mainly adivasis, were forced into unemployment as a result of the purchase of this agricultural land by the Coca-Cola Company, which the political authorities facilitated.

Postcolonial Capitalism and Identification of “Local” as Marginal

In this context, along with Harvey, Sanyal’s (2007) conceptualization of “development” and “postcolonial capitalism” offers a useful theoretical frame for understanding the dispossessed/dislocated status of the adivasis in Plachimada. Sanyal offers the view that a new political economy of postcolonial capitalism is needed to explain how and why a significant segment of the population “in the postcolonial world remains excluded from the ‘modern and dynamic’ economy governed by the logic of capital” (Sanyal, 2007, p. ix).

According to Sanyal, the dominant discourse explains capitalism in terms of two prominent characteristics—the free market and private property, which he argues are highly problematic. He has observed: “private property and the market are both requirements for capitalism, but they alone do not make a system capitalistic” since “the combination of the market and private property does not rule out non-capitalist production” (Sanyal, 2007, p. 3). He problematizes the dominant neoliberal view of capitalism by raising a critical question: “isn’t it possible to see capitalism as necessarily a complex of capitalist and non-capitalist production residing in the commodity space? In other words, can’t we see capitalist development as a process that necessarily produces, brings into existence, non-capitalistic economic processes in its own course?” (Sanyal, 2007, p. 7). In his answer to this question, he conceptualizes postcolonial capitalist development as a process that in its own course recreates pre-capitalist relations of production. He argues that on one hand, “the process of primitive accumulation leads to the destruction of the pre-capitalist sectors” and on the other, it concomitantly “produces a space that necessitates the recreation of those sectors” (Sanyal, 2007, p. 39).

He contends, “pre-capital’s conditions of existence flow from the internal logic of the expanded reproduction of capital.” Thus, he says “pre-capital constitutes an internal ‘other’ of capital and the possibility of capital superseding the pre-capital becomes a theoretical impossibility”—and this is the major characteristic feature of the political economy of postcolonial capitalism (Sanyal, 2007, p. 39). Rather than getting into that debate on this subject in detail, it is necessary to mention that, as per this conceptualization, the prefix the “pre” in pre-capitalist is replaced by “non” as in non-capitalist. Consequently, he proposes that “the ‘other’ of capitalism is now non-capitalist, but which is articulated with capitalist relations of production, and the market constitutes the space in which this articulation takes place” (Sanyal, 2007). On the basis of this understanding, he puts forward his key argument on postcolonial capitalist development as follows:

The conceptualization of post-colonial capital in terms of this complex amounts to saying that transition in the historical sense has already occurred and what we have is capitalism with an inherent heterogeneity. Capitalist development in this scenario means not a structural shift from non-capital to capital, but the development of the entire capital–non-capital complex. (Sanyal, 2007, p. 40)

With this in mind, if we look at the appropriation of land by the global capitalist enterprise, Coca-Cola, and its impact on the life of the local people, especially the adivasis in Plachimada, we see them as the non-capital “other,” who in this case are unemployed agricultural laborers. At the same time, in this case the appropriation does not recreate non-capitalist relations of production.

The marginality of the adivasis can be equated with Sanyal’s term “wasteland” since their lives as agricultural laborers have been sabotaged and destroyed by the global expansion of capital—in this case by the Coca-Cola Company. According to Sanyal, one can say that these adivasis are “condemned to the world of the excluded, the redundant, the dispensable, and having nothing to lose, not even the chains of wage-slavery” (Sanyal, 2007). This represents a case in which the postcolonial capital and non-capital complex involves the destruction but not the recreation of non-capitalist relations. While largely agreeing with Sanyal’s conceptualization in understanding the complexity of the expansion of global capital to a regional and local location like Plachimada, it is difficult to validate the argument entirely because the recreation of the non-capitalist “other” cannot be fully verified in the experience of Plachimada.

The Interface Between Global/Postcolonial Capitalism and Local Resistance

One can argue that Plachimada as a locality has become a local case of the operations of global capital in which it is possible to explore the meaning of the “local” in the context of global and postcolonial capitalism. Here, Plachimada constitutes the “local” and can be identified as a site of backwardness, a habitat of predominantly adivasis with traditional values and beliefs, and therefore it calls for so-called capitalist “development” without delay. These identifications can be constructed in the discourse of the developmentalist state which is primarily associated with postcolonial capitalism (as defined by Sanyal and others) and in the conceptual perspective of global corporate capital (such as Harvey’s conceptualization). They can be intertwined in the case of Plachimada.

Coca-Cola chose Plachimada because it recognized it as a locality with abundant ground water. Coca-Cola also wanted to extend their network to a remote rural locality but they concealed this fact. In the beginning of the 1990s, Coca-Cola openly stated in an advertisement that “we are not a multinational, we are a multi-local” company (cited in Morley, 1991, p. 15). This statement reveals how the “local” is envisioned in their global capitalist interests. Before the Coca-Cola plant was set up, the popular imagination in Plachimada was not much different from that of the perception of the developmentalist state. This is exemplified in a conversation between the local ward member, named Bhaskaran ¹² and one of the prominent leaders of the movement, Mayilamma. ¹³ The former started the conversation with Mayilamma by making the following observation:

Mayilamma, a big company is coming to our ward soon. It would be a great relief, especially for the people like you who have been working very hard in muddy and filthy conditions for a long time. At least you can work without affecting rain and sunlight. Moreover, some people will get job also.

In reply to this, Mayilamma said:

It’s not right Bhaskaretta. ¹⁴ If this company is coming to our place, it will spoil us. They are coming to our place to destroy our water. For me, there is a specific reason to say this. I heard that there was a soda company set up around 10 kilometers away from here at Amrampalayam in Tamil Nadu. One person belongs to our community [adivasis] who was working there. Four or five bore wells were set up inside that company. Here if we dig a little below the surface, we will get water whereas in those areas the machine has dug on the ground at a deeper level. Therefore, the machine has extracted water from all the nearest streams. What happened ultimately? They usually cultivated rice, corn, cora and cumb and engaged in the harvest two times in a year and that has been reduced to once in a year due to the water shortage. Later, getting water even once has also become difficult. Subsequently, drought had affected that area. A well-educated counten (Tamilan) told to our person that establishment of the company was responsible for that damage and this was the basic reason of our fear.

As a reaction to this anxiety and fear, the ward member Bhaskaran replied:

It won’t happen. There are other solutions if there is a water shortage; for instance, one of the solutions is water supply by using existing pipe/tap connections or through tanker lorries. First and foremost, the company has to come, and further the most important thing is to get jobs for our children. In spite of all these, it would be a pride for us to say that such a big company is coming to our village and panchayat.

It is clearly evident that this ward member has a modernist notion of development, whereas Mayilamma expresses her anxiety and fear about the destructive implications of this development by invoking the experiences of the other local people. She has learned about the ecological, social, and political consequences of this kind of development from the other natives who have experienced the consequences. Here the “local” does not mean an unchallenging and unsophisticated mind set; rather, the “local” involves principally two opposing views in connection to capitalist development. The view represented by the ward member who accepts the views of the national and local politician and economic elites dominates over the marginalized voices represented by Mayilamma. In this context, the establishment of Coca-Cola represents the arrival of global capitalism. The experiences of Plachimada clearly exemplify how global capitalism reshapes the “local” in postcolonial conditions or, in other words, how it ensures a kind of synergy with the already existing postcolonial capitalism to appropriate and exploit the resources of these kinds of local communities.

A new local consciousness can emerge in such cases through local social movement activism as witnessed in the narrative of Mayilamma. She refers to this in the following words:

We are fighting for the right to get water for drinking and bathing. Nobody is supporting the attempts to pollute the drinking water and its excessive extraction even in terms of employment opportunities. It not only affects the present generation but it will create difficulties for the future generation. We never expected that this much problem the company will create when they started functioning. Water has become contaminated and unusable for drinking and bathing within six months after the establishment of the company. Therefore, we decided to fight against the Coca-Cola company who are denying our basic right for water. (Keraleeyam, 2005, p. 18)

Further, she narrated the plight of the local people as follows:

The farmers around the plant stopped cultivation due to severe shortage of water. This was another thunderbolt on us that took away our daily little earnings. We were forced to migrate to faraway lands, seeking for some work or other to make our living. Suddenly we felt terribly helpless, facing the fact that we were being robbed. Our precious water resource had been stolen… lakhs of liters every day… Where would I get some fresh and pure drinking water anymore? How many kilometers should we have to walk to fetch a drop of water? Who will compensate the heavy loss incurred upon us by this giant plant? ¹⁵

This narrative reflects a new notion of agency in the context of the local people. These are reactions to a local predicament that has resulted from development as conceived within postcolonial capitalism. Note that Mayilamma’s concern is not merely about the effects on the present generation but about the effects on the future generation as well. It reveals that people in the locality of Plachimada, predominantly adivasis, are gaining a new consciousness about how they have been subjected to the exploitation of global capital as part of the establishment and further operations of the Coca Cola Company. According to Dirlik (1997), this consciousness is not a sign of powerlessness; instead, it manifests a new sense of agency and local power which is different from that which was previously known among these people, especially adivasis, who now are persistently seeking the recognition of their social existence and their needs. They are challenging the prevailing “Kerala model of development” which has been constituted within the larger frame of modernity and which does not even acknowledge their historical and political presence and their interests.

Conclusions

Plachimada can be identified as a “local” site that is emblematic of marginality in the discourse of both the developmentalist state and postcolonial capitalism on the one hand, and the expansion of global capitalism on the other hand. This article locates this case in a developmental process that can best be conceived in the frame of both postcolonial and global capitalism which promote the capitalist appropriation of natural resources, including land and water, by multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola and the local resistance that is engendered by this exploitation.

This article argues that the process of exploitation involved in Plachimada cannot be adequately explained by using Marx’s original idea of “primitive accumulation” because the empirical processes of accumulation that have taken place in Plachimada have not involved overt coercion. Instead, this article draws upon the theoretical insights provided by Harvey and uses the concept of “accumulation by dispossession” to explain this case. In this specific context, the adivasis were not displaced from their land through outright coercion because they were not the owners of land purchased by the Coca-Cola plant.

Nevertheless, the adivasis have been dispossessed of their livelihood by the loss of their access to the land where they worked as agricultural laborers and they were not employed by the Coca-Cola Company as wage-earning factory workers. Further, this article equates the marginality of adivasis with Sanyal’s term “wasteland” because the livelihood of the adivasis as agricultural laborers have been demolished and they have been cast aside by both the global expansion of capital as manifested by the actions of the multinational corporation of Coca-Cola and by the postcolonial capitalist development of the Indian state of Kerala. While agreeing with Sanyal’s conceptualization in understanding the complexity of the expansion of global capital to locations such as Plachimada, this case does not provide evidence to support his thesis entirely because the recreation of non-capitalist relations of production in this locale, as envisaged in his theoretical perspective, has not taken place.

This article identifies the role of the local social movement in transforming Plachimada as a space of “critical locality” from a locale that was emblematic of marginality to one that has resisted its marginality and expressed through its own ideas and identity a demand for control over their local natural resources. They have an alternative vision of development and resistance against the unhindered expansion of global capitalism. Further, it should be noted that the idea of “critical locality” applies to this case where the past is always a reference point, though not an uncritical social space to simply go back to. Rather, the past and the present are equally subjected to critical evaluation informed by the lived experiences of the people who have been exploited, oppressed, and excluded (marginality) from the local trajectory of capitalist development. Thus, “local” in the case of Plachimada is a site of interrogation, which involves interrogating marginality, and of “invention and construction” that promises to build an equitable future by rejecting global capitalist intrusion through seeking global support for the recognition of their social and political existence and interests.