In New Delhi a new advertisement featuring three of the leading Bollywood actors was perfectly timed to take the fizz out of the eagerly awaited report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on pesticide residues in (and safety standards for) soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages. No surprise, therefore, like the escape of impregnated carbon dioxide from the cola bottle, that the historic findings of the report had evaporated from public memory within a week of the report's release!
Tabled simultaneously in both houses of the Parliament on 4 February 2004, the JPC report put an official stamp on the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment´s claims that indeed soft drinks contained pesticide residues. Though the findings were nothing less than historic, they could not make a dent in the face of the publicity blitz unleashed by the cola multinationals, which have comforted the public with the belief that the drinks are safe.
The `clean chit´ provided to the multinationals by none other than the country´s health minister, Sushma Swaraj, prior to the setting up of the JPC, had already worked in their favour. While the 15-member JPC sat to examine all the relevant facts in setting up a comprehensive public health agenda, the cola companies were busy building up their ad campaign out of a formidable war chest with which to buy the most popular Bollywood stars.
The JPC had little option but to hold the Ministry of Health responsible for the spread of misinformation, but by that time, the damage had already been done. For the INR 6,000 crore (close to USD 1330 million) soft drinks industry that is growing at an impressive rate of 7-8 percent annually, the six months spent by the JPC in filing its report was a period to let loose the blitz, with not a second to be lost. And, it did not miss any minute of this opportunity! When it comes to business in fluid products, to begin with, six months actually translates into no less than 3000 million bottles of soft drinks pushed down the throats of unsuspecting public.