204480 Undertrials in Indian Jails--Panasonic launches digital camera with SD memory card capability in the Middle East--Focus on employment for UAE Women in the government sector in keeping with the emiratisation initiative
No Water to drink?, Drink Coke Nityanand Jayaraman (India organizer for CorpWatch India.) On June 9, 2002, the police cracked down on the indigenous people whose peaceful picketing outside the Coke factory had entered the 49th day. Police violently arrested 130 protestors, mostly indigenous peoples and including 30 women and 9 children and infants. Five women were harassed and their blouses torn.The ranks of the arrested included supporters from other parts of the country who had come to express solidarity with the protesting community.
These include representatives from the Phillip Morris Carbon Plant, activists of National Alliance of People's Movement, National Front for Tribal Self Rule, All India Coordinating Forum of Adivasis/Indigenous Peoples, All India Students Association, and office bearers of Peoples' Union For Civil Liberties from Kerala and Tamilnadu.As the summer and the water crisis intensifies, the hardships of the local people have worsened. But Coca Cola has continued its production and groundwater extraction uninterrupted with police protection.
On 22 April, 2002, more than 2,000 irate protestors, consisting mostly of indigenous people and dalits (oppressed castes), gathered at the gates of the Hindustan Coca Cola factory in Plachimada. Residents from the villages surrounding Coke's greenfield soft-drink bottling factory here say that Coke's indiscriminate mining of groundwater has dried up many wells, and contaminated the remainder. At least 50 villagers have maintained a picket outside the factory gate every day since the strike began. According to local sources, the villagers are angry enough to destroy the factory failing government action to shut down the water-intensive unit.
Till date, the Government has taken no action to check groundwater depletion by Coke in the region. Police, however, had arrested several villagers on the first day of the strike. A contingent of police is currently posted at the factory to protect it from any potential trouble caused by the water-starved community. Coke's recent placatory gesture of supplying a truckload of water each day to the two worst affected villages hasnt impressed the protestors. They say that Coke will have to pay for restoring the damaged groundwater aquifers and for long-term water supply to all the impacted villages.
A Coke spokesperson who declined to be named, dismisses the protests as a non-issue. "There is absolutely no water issue in [Plachimada]. We have not found any change in the water situation. The issue there is highly politicized." Villagers, on the other hand, say that the company, not the struggle, is politicized. They accuse the local leaders of political parties of colluding with Coke. Lending credence to this allegation is the fact that barring the youth wing of the Congress party, none of the political parties active in the villages have issued a statement in support of the people's struggle against Coke. Wells Run DryCoca Cola's bottling plant was set up three years ago in the middle of fertile agricultural land. "Coca Cola's plant is illegal because they haven't even obtained clearance for putting agricultural land to non-agricultural uses," says M. Swaminathan, a tribal leader from Velloor, one of the tribal villages affected by Coke's activities. Kerala states Land Utilization Act requires prior approval for conducting non-agricultural activities on designated agricultural land.
Given its proximity to a number of reservoirs and irrigation canals, the region has access to healthy groundwater resources. Until recently, Coke was drawing 1.5 million liters/day from the common groundwater resource. This year, the water scarcity has hit even Coke. The company is only able to extract only 800,000 liters from the borewells. The remainder is supplied by water trucks that carry water extracted from borewells in neighboring villages. According to local estimates, Coke's water mining has parched the lands of more than 2000 people residing within 1.2 miles of the factory. Barely six months after the factory set up, villagers and farmers living around the bottling unit began noticing changes in the quantity and quality of well water. Water from a well in Plachimada, a tribal colony with nearly 100 families living along the eastern wall of the factory, rapidly turned brackish and milky white in color. The water was unfit for drinking, cooking and bathing.
"Coca Cola has made life miserable for us, for our women. Our women have had to walk nearly one kilometer to get water from a neighboring village, and return in time to get to work," says Swaminathan. Those who are unable to make the trek for water continue to depend on the contaminated water. Of late, nearly 100 people have reported recurring stomach aches, which they relate to the water they are being forced to drink. The water crisis has hit the farmers too. Theivathal Gounder and her son R. Krishnaswamy harvest coconuts, paddy and peanuts on their 7-acre farm. Over the last two years, they have seen their wells yield plummet. "Earlier, we had enough water to run the pump for 18-20 hours. Now, after four hours of pumping, the well is dry, and what water we get is rapidly turning brackish like the wells on the other side," says Theivathal.
The Gounders say they spent Rs. 60,000 last year deepening their well after Cokes pumps sucked their water away. This year, the company sunk yet another borewell barely 20 meters from their well. According to Theivathal, the water has receded by another five feet as a result. "We told them when they sunk the bore. But the Coca Cola people said they'll sink a well wherever they choose on their land," laments Theivathal. The Coca Cola official who spoke to CorpWatchIndia has a similar take on the matter. "We have bought the land. No law regulates us on our use of water. Okay, we may be mining water, but so are others. At least, we have some rain water harvesting," he says.
The Gounders say the Coke-induced scarcity of water has resulted in a six-fold decrease in their coconut yield. Water Declared Very HardCorpWatch India sent samples of water from the wells in Plachimada and the Gounders farm for scientific analyses at a Chennai-based Government-approved laboratory. Interpreting the results, Dr. Mark Chernaik, a staff scientist with Oregon-based E-LAW US -- a network of public interest environmental lawyers writes: "Water from the village well and the farmer's well would be classified as 'very hard.' Use of this water for bathing and washing would cause severe nuisance and hardship. Water from the [village] well and, to a lesser extent, water from the farmer's well would have an objectionable taste because of the high levels of calcium and magnesium."
According to Dr. Chernaik, the results lend some corroboration to villagers claims that the water problems are caused by Coke's over-exploitation of the groundwater. "Excessive calcium and magnesium in groundwater usually is the result of the dissolution of limestone that is associated with the groundwater deposit. Therefore, this water quality analysis supports the following hypothesis . . . [that] rapid extraction of water from the aquifer (after the arrival of the Coca Cola bottling plant) would increase the rate at which water is flowing through the limestone or clay. Faster flowing water would break apart some of the limestone or clay, resulting in the addition of limestone or clay particles to the water supply."
Coke's Track RecordCommunity complaints about Coke's exploitation of common groundwater resources are not peculiar to Plachimada. Neither does its track record in India and elsewhere corroborate its claims of "responsible corporate citizenship." · Capt. J. Rama Rao of Hyderabad-based NGO Samriti writes about Sri Sarvaraya Sugars, a bottling unit dedicated to producing Cokes Kinley brand of water located in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh. The factory draws 225,000 liters of water per day. "As a result, the borewells in certain areas of Sattupalli village, having a population of 25,000 are reported to have dried up," writes Rao. The Coke spokesperson dismissed these allegations as politically motivated. ·
M.V.R. Mineral Water and S.R. Minerals, both of whom are contract bottlers for Coke's Kinley brand of water, have also been accused of depleting the groundwater in Athur village, 40 kilometers northwest of Chennai. M.V.R. Mineral Water reportedly extracts 132,000 liters of water each day. "The bottling units have sunk very deep borewells and are sucking out so much water that farmers are suffering," says A.V. Chandra, a local activist with Redhills-based NGO Womens Collective. Disturbingly, Kinley's bottling units are located in an area that has been declared sensitive because of the plentiful sweet water available underground and because of the areas importance to the water security of the region and the city of Chennai. Local pollution control board officials fear that the highly saline effluent from the factory's water purification plant will gradually turn the local aquifers brackish. "This is a drinking water area. It is not good to have industries that generate and discharge high-salinity wastes in this area," says Sheela Rani Chunkath, chairperson of the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board.
In 1999, the Goa Pollution Control Board issued a notice to the multinational for operating its new factory without securing the official consent. The company functioned for more than 40 days without the prescribed effluent treatment systems. 2 · Reporting for the Guerrilla News Network on February 12, 2002, David Bacon in his article "The Coca Cola killings" writes: "Plan Colombia, America's $1.3 billion aid package to the Colombian government, is supposed to be about ending that country's civil war, but that money may be helping fund death squads that brutally oppress, even kill, everyday working Colombians. . .Multinational corporations like Coca-Cola have been implicated in the death squads' dirty deeds." A death squad assassinated a Coca Cola union leader outside the companys factory gates in Carepa, Colombia.
In May 2002, several employees of Coca Cola in Texas accused the company of repackaging nearly out-of-date soda cans and bottles and reselling them in stores frequented by people of color -- primarily Latino and African American people.The Big Picture"The trouble with Coke [in Plachimada] cannot be seen in isolation," says Dr. S. Janakarajan, an economist working on groundwater issues with the Madras Institute of Development Studies. "In this case, a community may have lost its access to water for drinking or agricultural purposes for the sake of supplying Coca Cola. The same has happened in other places where industries have privatized common groundwater resources or polluted them," he says. In the absence of any law to regulate the extraction of groundwater, people or companies with resources can privatize entire aquifers just by virtue of owning a small piece of land. "In this race, those who have the resources are the winners; the poor are the losers," Janakarajan explains.
"Competitive deepening" of wells or borewells by water-intensive agricultural or industrial users has already laid waste the groundwater in large tracts of India. Many other freshwater sources have been contaminated by agricultural runoffs, and rampant sewage or industrial pollution. Ironically, the resultant scarcity of clean drinking water has spawned yet another water-intensive industry that exploits one communitys water and sells it at a profit to consumers who can afford to buy it. In Chennai alone, more than 200 legal and 400 illegal bottled water manufacturers operate. Indias packaged water industry, which is barely a decade old, is already a Rs. 8 billion ($170 million) market, and is expected to grow to Rs. 12 billion ($250 million) by 2004. Brandnames such as Coke's Kinley, Pepsi's Aquafina and the Indian bottled water giant Parle's Bisleri enjoy a Rs. 4 billion ($85 million) market, according to the Coke official.
The profitability of this business is beyond question. Coke's Indian operations took a beating in the first few years of operation after fizzy drinks failed to perform to company expectations. But after Kinley, Coke's water brand, was launched in mid-2000, the multinationals revenues nosed up. In fact, Coca Cola Indias third quarter 2001 results mention that "its growth of 11 percent had been led by the successful expansion of Kinley water." Unfortunately, despite acute, and sometimes perennial water scarcity in many parts of India, the government is yet to legislate effectively to conserve groundwater resources. Soft drink and bottled water companies pay next to nothing for the water they extract. Given that the primary raw material comes free of cost, wastage in the industry is ridiculously high. At Coca Cola's bottling unit in Nemam village of Tamilnadu, more than 2.5 million liters of water are extracted. Of this, 1.2 million liters is used for washing bottles, crates, equipment and the floors. Only 692,000 -- less than 30 percent -- is used for actually manufacturing the soft drinks. Despite the large quantities of water drawn, the company paid approximately $50 as water cess for a five month period recently. Meanwhile, plans are afoot in several states of India to force urban and rural consumers to pay real costs for drinking water.
204480 Undertrials in Indian Jails
There are 204480 under trials in jails all over the country as on date. Of them, 44269 under trials are in jails of Uttar Pradesh followed by 39449 under trials in jails of Bihar, 18501 under trials in jails of Madhya Pradesh, 13960 under trials in jails of Maharashtra, 9289 in jails of Tamil Nadu, 8776 in jails of Delhi, 8557 in jails of Andhra Pradesh, 8009 in jails of Orissa and 7430 in jails of Punjab.
Of the total under trials in jails, there are a total of 2206 under trials in detention for more than five years. Of these, 99 under trials are in detention for more than five years in Uttar Pradesh followed by 1713 under trials in detention in Bihar, 87 in Madhya Pradesh, 6 in Maharashtra, 100 in Delhi, 7 in Andhra Pradesh, 3 in West Bengal , 12 in Orissa and 22 in Punjab.
Prison is State subject in the Constitution of India. States have to spend Rs. 55 per day per under trial in detention. At this rate, more than Rs. 461 crores is incurred bythe States annually on under trials. If their cases are expedited by courts then the money thus saved could be transferred to vital welfare activities. It is in this context, that the Centre has been stressing the need for expediting filling of vacancies of judges in the subordinate courts and early disposal of the cases of under trials.
Global demand for digital cameras estimated to reach 28 million units in 2002
Panasonic launches digital camera with SD memory card capability in the Middle East
June 15, 2002
Dubai; keralamonitor.com Panasonic, the internationally renowned electronic consumer brand, has recently launched a multi-function digital camera with SD Memory Card capability in the Middle East. Embodying the latest in advanced technology, the extremely compact camera offers a wide range of functions, including movie and still camera, voice recorder and SD audio player.
"In the current age of radical technological advancements, it is a well established fact that digital photography is indeed the norm of the day and has taken over the more traditional and conservative form of photography. Digital photography is extremely beneficial as it avoids the need for film and film developing, thus making it possible to view recorded images instantaneously. It also provides the facility of allowing pictures to be shared worldwide via the Internet as well as enabling PC-based manipulation and enhancement," said Atsushi Hinoki, General Manager, Advertising and PR. "Industry forecasts also predict that the global demand for digital cameras will reach a phenomenal 28 million units in 2002. These figures point to a tremendous scope for opportunities that cut across prevailing consumer and professional markets, as well as new markets for network-based cameras. The Middle East is also witnessing a tremendous increase in demand for digital cameras."
The all-in-one new camera, SV-AV10 comprises a host of exciting functions that include a digital movie camera, digital still audio player and voice recorder with a recording or playback time of approximately 60 minutes. It utilizes SD Memory Cards, the super-light storage medium developed for audio, video and computer applications. The digital movie camera facilitates the recording of MPEG4 moving images and sound up to 1 hour on an 64MB SD Memory Card in economy mode. The highly compressed data enables users to send it by email or use it in a website. The digital still audio player provides the option whereby convenient data size allows pictures to be sent by email as attachments without the need to resize images.
Another striking feature is that the 64MB SD Memory Card holds up to 1,760 still pictures. The digital still camera also has a handy flash for taking still pictures in low light conditions. The image viewer enables on-the-spot checking of the video and still image shooting results. The audio player enables playback of music data recorded with a PC, in addition to allowing users to listen to MP3 music with earphones. The voice recorder enables the function of making voice recordings to SD memory cards up to 4 hours. The AV10 can be utilized as an IC recorder to record conferences and meetings.
Dubai campaign on career planning for Dubai Women's College
Focus on employment for UAE Women in the government sector in keeping with the emiratisation initiative
June15, 2002 keralamonitor.com
Dubai e-Government hosted a presentation for a delegation of 20 students of Dubai Women's College, to create widespread awareness of the diverse range of career options available to students. The extensive presentations provided students with deep insights into various professions prevalent in today's world. Conducted by Marwan Al Naqi, Community Outreach Officer Government Sector, Dubai e-Government, Anas Haddad, Content Manager, Dubai e-Government and A. Nasser Ahli, Software Engineer, Dubai e-Government, the presentations highlighted the importance of the Dubai e-Government in easing the lives of the residents of the emirate. The detailed presentations dealt with the marketing, content management and software enginering fields with added emphasis on the Dubai e-Government."We believe that it is imperative to educate students on the various options available today so as to facilitate their career choices. In today's competitive world, students require a guiding force to enable them to make the right decision. These presentations provide an ideal opportunity for students to be aware of the ever-changing job market. It was also in keeping with the Dubai e-Government objective to educate significant segments of the national community in order to strengthen the foundations of a technologically aware future population and share Dubai e-Government initiatives with residents of the emirate," said Salem Al Shair, Director e-Services, Dubai e-Government. "The commitment of Dubai e-Government in the emiratization process is evident as witnessed by the various initiatives undertaken by us. The e-Government portal will soon have a job section where applicants can submit their CVs online, which will be distributed to all the government departments," he added.
"We are imparting basic skills in Maths, English and Arabic to the students undertaking the foundation course before going to the first year of university. This is an orientation program to help them prepare for their future career. It is a bridge between school and college to make sure that they possess the fundamental skills and have an idea of what field they will pursue after leaving college," said Stephen Bushill, Faculty, Dubai Women's College. "We would like to thank the Dubai e-Government for providing us with the opportunity to be here today and we believe that the vision of Dubai Women's College is in line with that of the e-Government. This drive is indeed pioneering and forward-thinking, which makes us proud to support it by participating in its various initiatives. This campaign is a brilliant concept as it provides students with first-hand information on the various career options available to them in the market today. Many students are also targeting the Dubai e-Government for job prospects. Students will be compelled to write a report at the end of the presentations to show what they have understood, which is part of their training program," he added.
Al Naqi laid added emphasis on the marketing profession and provided students with invaluable insight into the job description of a marketing professional. His presentation also stressed on the characteristics and requirements for a successful marketing career and stated that a good marketing professional is well versed in the art of persuasion. He reiterated that students must make rational and logical decisions in choosing a major in university and advised them not to fall in the trap of studying in faculties that do not suit their personalities. Al Naqi also spoke about the importance of the combination of information technology and marketing fundamentals, which is absolutely essential to promote e-services.
"The students are at an extremely critical stage and many a time are greatly confused when it somes to selecting a suitable major or university. We endeavor to provide them with information about a variety of opportunities that exist in today's world as well as make them aware of alternative positions available in the Dubai e-Government ," added Al Naqi.
The presentation conducted by Anas Haddad dealt with the main concepts in content management. He gave the students a comprehensive idea about the role of content management in enhancing e-services. "Content management is an emerging science that is gradually gaining tremendous importance. Universities have realized the value of creating professionally trained and competent individuals in this field. The content management field is relatively untapped and new. Hence, we need to educate students on the vital role it plays to reach an e-community. The content management field requires an IT background, in addition to an untamed passion and a strong yearning to constantly update one's educational background," added Haddad.
"Marketing and content management are extremely vital to the smooth success of the Dubai e-Government initiative. However, a fundamental element mandatory for the existence of the e-Government portal is software engineering. The final presentation provided students with practical knowledge on software engineering," said Nasser. It also gave the students a general idea on the development of an information system by implementing the best and most efficient new techniques. It demonstrated how all the other departments could benefit from its technologically advanced information system, which goes a long way in saving money, time, efforts in addition to creating harmony between the various departments
