Public Policymaking in India

Appendix 6

Storm in the Cola Bottle

The Original

It was superb timing and superb targeting. The Parliament was in session and the targets were soft targets, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, who, for many, can do nothing right. On 5 August 2003, Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), held a press conference and announced that twelve soft drink brands collected for testing from in and around Delhi contained residues of four extremely toxic pesticides and insecticides—lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos—far in excess of the maximum residue limit for pesticides in water used as ‘food’, as set down by the European Economic Commission (EEC). The contaminants in Pepsi were thirty-seven times higher than the EEC limit; Coca-Cola ...