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Coca-Cola Continues Unethical and Dishonest Practices in India

Company Must Follow Recommendations of Company Funded Study: Shut Down Kala Dera Bottling Plant
By Amit Srivastava India Resource Center September 12, 2008

San Francisco: It is said that those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them. It seems that the Coca-Cola has not learnt any lessons from Plachimada - a village in the state of Kerala in India where the community-led campaign has shut down its plant since March 2004. The manner is which the Coca-Cola company has decided to deal with another community-led campaign in India - in the village of Kala Dera in the state of Rajasthan - is indicative of the arrogance and impunity of the company that has landed it in trouble before. And Coca-Cola in India is in for a rude awakening, again.

Kala Dera - Thirsting from Coca-Cola

Unusable Well in Kala Dera Showing Depleted Water Level

Kala Dera is a large village outside the city of Jaipur where agriculture is the primary source of livelihood. Coca-Cola started its bottling operations in Kala Dera in 2000, and within a year, the community started to notice a rapid decline in groundwater levels. For farmers, loss of groundwater translated directly into loss of income. For women, it meant having to walk an additional 5 to 6 kilometers just to fetch water to meet the basic daily needs of the family. For many children in Kala Dera, it meant leaving schools to provide a much needed helping hand doing household chores since the women had additional burdens. The community in Kala Dera organized itself to challenge the Coca-Cola company for the worsening water conditions - through extraction and pollution - and demanded the closure of the Coca-Cola bottling plant. The company, in usual fashion, denied any wrongdoing, blaming "outsiders" for the increasing local community opposition.

Forced Assessment Validates Community Concerns

The community of Kala Dera, as well as the villages of Plachimada and Mehdiganj in India that are opposing Coca-Cola bottling plants, have enjoyed significant international support. And most notable in lending support have been college and university students across the globe, and in particular, the US, UK and Canada - some of Coca-Cola's larger markets. One of the successful campaigns was at the prestigious University of Michigan in the US, which, after a sustained student-led campaign in which the India Resource Center represented the India issues, placed theCoca-Cola company on probation on January 1, 2006. The university also mandated that Coca-Cola agree to an independent assessment of its operations in India if it ever wanted to do business with the university. The assessment, paid for by Coca-Cola and conducted by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), only looked at six bottling plants in India and was released in January 2008. The assessment was a scathing indictment of Coca-Cola's operations in India.

Validating the concerns of the communities campaigning against Coca-Cola, the assessment noted that Coca-Cola approached its operations in India from a "business continuity" perspective that ignored the impacts on the community.

Stop Using Groundwater in Kala Dera

Some of the most disturbing findings in the assessment concerned Coca-Cola's bottling plant in Kala Dera. Confirming that Coca-Cola's bottling plant in Kala Dera operated in an "overexploited" groundwater area and the Coca-Cola's bottling plant had "significant impacts", the assessment noted that "the plant's operations in this area would continue to be one of the contributors to a worsening water situation and a source of stress to the communities around." The assessment made four recommendations with regard to the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Kala Dera, making it clear that Coca-Cola could no longer utilize the overexploited groundwater resource in Kala Dera: 1. Transport water from the nearest aquifer that may not be stressed 2. Store water from low-stress seasons 3. Relocate the plant to a water-surplus area 4. Shut down this facility The community in Kala Dera, needless to say, welcomed the recommendations. Unfortunately, they still wait for Coca-Cola to make good on the recommendations made by the assessment that Coca-Cola itself paid for.

Coca-Cola's Response - Unethical and Dishonest

Coca-Cola has had seven months to respond to the findings on Kala Dera. We have not seen much action on the part of Coca-Cola that address the concerns raised in the assessment. In fact, what we have seen much of, is an unethical and dishonest campaign by the Coca-Cola company in an attempt to misrepresent the issues.

Continued Misery in the Face of Certainty

Kala Dera lies in an overexploited groundwater area and access to water has been difficult. Summers are particularly intense in the area, and summers are when water shortages are most acute. Ironically, summer months are also when Coca-Cola reaches its peak production, and it is in the summer months that the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Kala Dera extracts the most water, making already existing water shortages even worse.

At the very least, the Coca-Cola company could have stopped extraction of water this summer, knowing very well the conclusions of the assessment.

Farmer in Kala Dera Shows Increased Electric Bill from Pumping Water from Depleted Groundwater

With facts in hand, the Coca-Cola company has chosen to continue its operations, knowingly contributing to the misery of thousands of people. On the one hand, Coca-Cola talks a good talk about being a good corporate citizen. Yet, it continues to deplete groundwater causing undue hardships to the community even after it has been told to stop doing so, that too by a study funded by the company itself.

Criminal Negligence or Straight Incompetence?

Prior to locating a bottling plant in Kala Dera, Coca-Cola is supposed to have conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment that looks at a variety of current conditions and potential impacts if the plant is built and operated. The Coca-Cola company has refused to share the environmental impact assessment it conducted for Kala Dera (or any other plants in India), citing "legal and strategic confidentiality" reasons. However, the Central Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater in and around Kala Dera to be "overexploited" in 1998. The Coca-Cola company started operations in 2000 - two years after the Indian government agency had already found it to be "overexploited". Did the Coca-Cola company know that the groundwater was overexploited and still built and operated its plant? If the company knew that the Kala Dera groundwater area was overexploited, then starting a water intensive plant borders on criminal negligence, if not criminal negligence

itself. And how could the company, which describes itself as a "hydration" company, not know that the Central Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater as overexploited?

Misrepresenting Facts
In reaching out to the media and the public regarding the scathing TERI assessment, the Coca-Cola company has misrepresented the facts on several occasions.

Coca-Cola Forced to Agree to Assessment

The Coca-Cola company says that it "voluntarily participated" in the assessment even though the University of Michigan insisted that Coca-Cola agree to an assessment if it wanted to do business with the University of Michigan. The company goes on further to state that "our voluntary participation in the TERI assessment reflects our commitment to transparency and continuous improvement." If Coca-Cola were committed to transparency, we would suggest they make a good start by sharing the Environmental Impact Assessment that they conducted for Kala Dera and rest of the bottling plants in India. And as for their commitment to "continuous improvement", Coca-Cola should start with implementing one of the four recommendations made by the assessment in regards to the Coca-Cola bottling plant at Kala Dera.

Coca-Cola Fails to Mention Shut Down Plant Recommendation

In its letter to the University of Michigan after the assessment, the company fails to mention the fourth recommendation made by the assessment - to shut down the bottling plant.

Coca-Cola Does Not Meet its Own Standards

In the same letter, the company states that their plants "on an overall basis are meeting our own more stringent internal standards." One of the shocking findings of the assessment was that of the six plants surveyed, in not one did the plant meet the Coca-Cola company standards for waste management, known as the TCCC standards! What is the point of having Coca-Cola company standards if not a single plant meets them?

Coca-Cola Not in Compliance with Government Regulations

In the same letter, the company states that "its bottlers are in compliance with the standards of relevant India government and regulatory agencies." Again, the assessment found that the treated effluent discharge at none of the six plants surveyed met all the standards of the relevant Indian government and regulatory agencies. The assessment states that the treated effluent discharge at the plants "mostly met the effluent discharge requirements". Mostly, at least from the last definition we checked, does not mean all.

Corporate Social Responsibility - A Scam?

While there have been no genuine initiatives on the part of Coca-Cola to correct its mistakes in Kala Dera, the Coca-Cola company has stepped up its corporate social responsibility spending to announce to the world that it is a green and socially responsible

Coca-Cola Sign - "Kala Dera - A Dream" Next to Dilapidated Rainwater Recharge Shafts

company. Such an effort, however, rings hollow when it comes to India.

Rainwater Harvesting - Dilapidated and a Bluff

With great fanfare, the company continues to announce its rainwater harvesting initiatives in India, even going as far as to announce that the company will become "water neutral" in India by 2009. There are some serious concerns about Coca-Cola's claims on rainwater harvesting. In Kala Dera, the company has announced that it has recharged five times the amount of water it has used. When asked to back it up with numbers, Coca-Cola does not provide any. In fact, in the letter to the University of Michigan, Coca-Cola states that they "will install measuring devices that will verify the amount of water recharged." If they do not have measuring devices installed to verify the amount of water recharged, how can they make a claim of recharging five times the water that they have extracted? People across Rajasthan are well versed in rainwater harvesting, and many communities have been harvesting rainwater long before Coca-Cola started. In fact, the Coca-Cola company started rainwater harvesting initiatives in India as a response to the growing campaigns against its water mismanagement. The community in Kala Dera has long maintained that Coca-Cola's rainwater harvesting structures do not work. Even the TERI assessment, which looked at Coca-Cola's CSR initiatives in Kala Dera, notes that "all the recharge shafts that were randomly visited were found to be in dilapidated conditions." "Coca-Cola is bluffing people with its rainwater harvesting. The problem is that the rainfall in the area is too low, and the amount of rainfalls fluctuates a lot from year to year and

within every year. We get a maximum of 30 days of rains every year, and eighty percent of those rains come in just two or three days. Rainwater harvesting is simply not efficient," says Dr. M.S. Rathore, a prominent natural resource expert with the Institute for Development Studies in Jaipur whose work was also referenced by the assessment. Finding dilapidated water recharge shafts, an intermittent, low and unpredictable rainfall pattern, a prominent hydrologist from the area saying it won't work, and Coca-Cola not even having installed water recharge meters yet claiming that they have recharged five times the water they use - surely something is out of order. And it is based on their rainwater harvesting initiatives that the Coca-Cola company has announced that they will become water neutral in India by 2009- that they will recharge more water than they use from the groundwater resource. Thanks, but no thanks. Coca-Cola's rainwater harvesting systems are shoddy, their intentions even more suspect, and their claims preposterous. Indeed, if they are so confident about their rainwater harvesting initiatives, let them use just the rainwater to meet all their production needs in India. Coca-Cola must follow the recommendations made by the TERI assessment with regard to Kala Dera and immediately cease tapping any further into the groundwater resource. Until then, the community of Kala Dera and the International Campaign to Hold Coca-Cola Accountable will continue to increase the pressure on the Coca-Cola company. Amit Srivastava is the Director of India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization based in San Francisco, USA.

CRIME

Top 10 Unethical Business Actions

RORY HYNES

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

This list was originally titled Most Evil Corporations but the author thought it would be best to keep the sites neutral status and minimize the probability of this list being classified as slander. As long as there has been big-business there have been dubious and flat-out immoral actions taking place to preserve profit, market share and public image. This list cannot be ranked too effectively, as the extent and severity of the misdeeds cannot be measured, but the items have been chosen because of their human and long-term cultural impact.

10
Wal-Mart Lack of compassion

Tip of the iceberg can describe the story below. Wal-Mart is company No. 1 in the world. It has the most revenue over any other company ($421 Billion). But its riches equal its controversies. This story is probably the most apt at describing the unethical treatment of its workers, because of the sheer senselessness of it. In 2000, a collision with a semi-trailer left 52-year-old Deborah Shank with permanent brain damage and in a wheelchair. Her husband and three sons were fortunate for a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company. After legal costs and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust to care for Mrs. Shank. However, six years later the providers of Mrs. Shanks health plan, Wal-Mart, sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. Wal-Mart was fully entitled to the money; in the fine print of Mrs. Shanks employment contract it said that money won in damages after an accident belonged to Wal-Mart. A federal judge had to rule in favor of

Wal-Mart, and the family of Mrs. Shank had to rely on Medicaid and social-security payments for her round-the-clock care. Wal-Mart may be reversing the decision after public outcry. However this case pinpoints Wal-Marts often criticized treatment of employees as a commodity and its sometimes inhuman business ethics.

9
Trafigura Dumping Toxic waste on the Ivory Coast and gagging the media

Earlier in the year, there was media frenzy in the U.K. over celebrities getting court injunctions to silence the press from reporting on their various misdeeds and grubby encounters. This story actually stems from a far more serious beginning, in 2006.

Trafigura is a multinational formed in 1993, trading in base metals and energy, including oil. It makes almost 80 billion USD a year. In 2006, it caused a health crisis affecting 108,000 people, after a ship leased by the company was told that, due to toxicity levels higher than expected, the price of transferring the waste on board to the processing plant in the Netherlands had increased twenty-fold. To avoid the charge, Trafigura ordered the ship to dock at other seaports until they could find someone who would dump the waste. At Abidjan, Cte dIvoire, one of Africas largest seaports, the waste was handed over to a newly formed dumping company, Compagnie Tommy, which illegally dumped the waste, instead of processing it. Many people there became sick due to exposure to the waste, and investigations began to determine whether it was intentionally dumped by Trafigura. Trafigura said in a press statement that their tests showed the waste not to be as toxic as had been claimed. This was proven false by a 2009 UN report posted by Wikileaks. When newspapers came to publish their own findings, which proved that Trafigura was guilty of releasing toxic waste, they lawyered up and started firing legal notices to all news outlets which were saying there was a connection between the dumping and the injuries reported in the Ivory Coast. The Guardian newspaper had conclusive evidence that Trafigura knew of the dumping, and had a report they were ready to publish, however the libel firm hired by Trafigura, Carter Ruck, applied for a super-injunction so that the paper couldnt publish the report until a court decision was made. This caused MP Evan Harris to question the freedom of the press in the country. However, after a twitter campaign that spread the story in a matter of hours, the libel firm responsible backed down and allowed the report to be published.

Carter Ruck are still pursuing a libel case against BBC Newsnight for allegations made on television (later proven true by an independent report).

8
Thomas Edison/Radio Corporation of America Attempting a monopoly of patents

The ability for inventors and aspiring minds to call an idea their own, and theirs alone, is a very important mark of a fair society. Unfortunately, history is littered by examples of intellectual property being swallowed up by big corporations. In particular, Thomas Edison and the companies he formed with his vast wealth (RCA, General Electric) have always had a habit of trying to abuse the patent system for profit. The reason that Hollywood is the home of the movie industry is that film-makers in the 1920s were forced to abandon the east-coast because of the high royalties that Edison charged them for use of camera technologies. Edison even had hired goons to harass them for money.

But it was a policy of the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) that caused untold damage for inventors of the 20th century. The official company policy was that The Radio Corporation doesnt pay royalties and, allegedly, David Sarnoff, the proud general manager of the company, boasted we collect them [royalties]. They repeatedly steamrolled inventors and small businesses to acquire their patents without licensing them, forcing the companies to collapse into the RCAs arms because of the mounting legal fees. However, there is one notable exception the inventor of electronic television, Philo T. Farnsworth, had his patent for electronic television and other components (notably the image dissector) approved in the early 30s, and no matter what the RCA did, they couldnt get round Farnsworths patents. In 1939, a month after the war had started, the RCA accepted to pay, for the first time in their corporate history, a $1,000,000 patent license for Farnsworths electronic television. Legend has it there were tears in the eyes of the RCA men as they signed the document. This whole practice was extremely unethical in terms of the technologies these companies prevented from reaching the market. Farnsworth hoped that television would bring people together and prevent war, but because of the RCAs actions and endless lawsuits, television never got going until the 50s.

7
Dyncorp Sex trafficking, reckless chemical usage

The first Private Military Company on the list, and certainly not the last, Dyncorp is a medium sized PMC with revenues of $3 Billion. PMCs are probably the most likely company to become involved in unethical situations. They are being paid by governments to protect areas, and often take the same roles as soldiers. Mixing money with killing is never going to be straightforward; the laws that apply to a PMC soldier are always a gray area, so the law often doesnt catch those that commit a crime. Dyncorp has been employed in Plan Colombia (part of the war on drugs) and, in 2001, a group of Ecuadorian farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against DynCorp under the Alien Tort Claims Act, the Torture Victim Protection Act and state law claims in US federal court in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs claimed that from January to February 2001, DynCorp sprayed herbicide almost daily, in a reckless manner, causing severe health problems (high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, dermatological problems) and the destruction of the food crops and

livestock of approximately 10,000 residents of the border region. In addition, the plaintiffs alleged that the toxicity of the fumigant caused the deaths of four infants in this region. Although the usage of herbicides was sanctioned by US congress, Dyncorp never mapped out areas of civilian crops to avoid. When Dyncorp was employed in Bosnia at the turn of the 21st century, it was revealed, by whistle-blower Ben Johnston, that DynCorp employees and supervisors engaged in sex with 12 to 15 year old children, and sold them to each other as slaves. Ben Johnston ended up fired, and later forced into protective custody. According to Johnston, none of the girls were from Bosnia itself, but were kidnapped by DynCorp employees from Russia, Romania and other places. DynCorp has admitted it fired five employees for similar illegal activities, prior to Johnstons charges. In the summer of 2005, the United States Defense department drafted a proposal to prohibit defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor. Several defense contractors, among others, DynCorp, stalled the establishment of a final proposal that would formally prohibit defense contractor involvement in these activities. More allegations of this sort appeared in 2009, involving employees hiring Afghan dancing boys for their pleasure.

6
Chevron Hiring military force for use on native peoples

Ever since attainable petroleum oil was discovered in 1956, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron have been making the most of the poor area. In the 70s, the Nigerian government began forcing them to abandon their land to oil companies without consultation, and offering negligible compensation. The government took control of this land so that it could be distributed to the oil companies. Resistance movements from the native people turned violent in the early 90s, and were threatening to disrupt the operations with mass action. This led to the government declaring that disturbing oil production was an act of treason. Chevron had a military base at their Escravos facility, in the Delta State of Nigeria, which housed over a hundred soldiers. In 1999, when leaders of the Ikiyan people came to negotiate with the soldiers, who were already attacking different villages, they were shot at and up to 62 people were killed by the soldiers, including a seven-year-old girl. The

soldiers proceeded to set the villages ablaze, kill livestock and destroy fishing equipment.

5
Blackwater

The biggest security PMC in the world and, like Dyncorp, is a minefield (sometimes literally) of ethical problems. However, treatment of its workers is what will be shown here. Blackwaters employee contracts routinely include clauses such as: 1) If you defy a direct order, for any reason, you will be abruptly terminated and Blackwater will withhold all back salary and bring legal action against your family.

2) If you die or are injured on a mission due to the negligence of Blackwater, you cant sue them. If you sue them, they will withhold all your back salary and bring legal action against you and your family. 3) You can be terminated for any reason whatsoever, and if you sue them for wrongful dismissal they will withhold all your back salary and bring legal action against you and your family. Basically, their contracting system holds employees in a state of legal servitude until they quit, and if they have a problem with Blackwater they will be sued by them until they go away. An infamous picture has circulated on the Internet of two Blackwater contractors dead, strung up after they dangerously went through Fallujah in a Jeep. Their superiors at Blackwater ordered them to do the run, even though they objected and the US Army had deemed it operationally dangerous, and refused to allow soldiers to enter. Blackwater also failed to provide a heavy gunner who was promised to the men to safeguard their trip. As a result, and the fact they couldnt refuse the order without bankrupting themselves and their families, they ended up like that. Blackwater show that they often ignore safety protocol to fulfill a defense contract and get paid. Though Backwaters main source of controversy are the constant allegations of arms smuggling and connections in the government securing them no-bid contracts.

4
Matthias Rath Alternative treatments for HIV/AIDS

Matthias Rath is a doctor turned vitamin entrepreneur. He runs the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and founded the Dr. Rath Research Institute. He has been called the most powerful crackpot on the Earth due to the large amount of funds he has gotten from investors who can see the value of selling vitamin pills to cure the most serious of ailments. In the UK, his adverts claimed that 90 per cent of patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer die within months of starting treatment, and suggested that three million lives could be saved if cancer patients stopped being treated by conventional medicine. The pharmaceutical industry was deliberately letting people die for financial gain, he explained. These advertisements are highly detrimental to cancer sufferers and cancer research groups, it can be easy to look at someone who has lost all their hair to chemotherapy and think that it is a poison, but it is scientifically proven to fight cancer.

Before advertising standards agencies from all over Europe were finally able to stop some of the dishonest adverts (challenging alternative medicine claims are always difficult due to the very nature of the topic), Rath had made his fortune and walked into South Africa with all the acclaim and wealth he needed to place full page advertisements in newspapers saying The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here. Antiretroviral drugs were poisonous, and were a conspiracy to kill patients and make money. Tragically, Matthias Rath had taken these ideas to exactly the right place. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa at the time, was well known as an AIDS protester, and to international horror, while people died at the rate of one every two minutes in his country, he gave credence and support to the claims of a small band of campaigners who state that AIDS does not exist, that it is not caused by HIV, that anti-retroviral medication does more harm than good, and so on. So, throughout the turn of the 21st Century, when the AIDS epidemic was at its peak, the South African government was arguing that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs are not useful for patients. They refused to roll out proper treatment programmes, and they refused to accept free donations of drugs. One study estimates that if the South African national government had used anti-retroviral drugs for prevention and treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape province (which defied national policy on the issue), around 171,000 new HIV infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007. Rath profited from all this anti-science feeling with his vitamin pills, which sold very well even though they were not supported by any trusted medical research. Matthias is constantly suing medical professionals for slander, when they say that his pills are useless and should not be seen as an alternative to tested medicines.

3
Dow Chemical/Union Carbide Rejecting liability of Bhopal Disaster

Dow Chemical already had a sinister reputation before they acquired Union Carbide, in 2001. Dow Chemical put a lot of money into its development and manufacturing of napalm for the U.S. military, a chemical which was infamous in the Vietnam War for giving people horrific burns and damaging a generation of unborn babies. Union Carbide, though, is directly responsible for the deaths of around 8,000 Indian people in December 1984, and the birth defects that followed. The Bhopal disaster occurred when a pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, owned and operated by Union Carbide Corporation, leaked large and deadly amounts of Methyl isocyanate, a highly poisonous gas. So many people were affected because the workers at

the plant were so poor that their families set up homes outside the factory gates. Union Carbide offered $350 million in compensation, the Government of India said that the damages cost $3.3 billion; the Government, in the end, had to settle for $470 million. Throughout the years, UCC have had to fund hospitals and response centers after being nagged by officials, but many still say that what UCC have donated is negligible when compared to the human cost of the disaster. Dow Chemical, who are the wealthier new owners of Union Carbide, have yet to make significant reparations to the people of Bhopal.

2
Siemens Aiding the Final Solution

During World War Two, Siemens was a major player in the Nazification of Germany, rebuilding the army, creating a giant infrastructure: railways, communications and power generation. More significantly for this list, they built factories at the camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It was typical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning, and be snuffed out in a Siemensmade gas chamber in the afternoon. The allies destroyed four fifths of Siemens operated buildings to destroy the brand of the Nazis; Siemens was seen as an icon of Nazi industry. Siemens is one of the few companies that still exist today, with the same name as when it exploited Jewish labor in the 40s. They are still paying up in lawsuits filed by holocaust survivors. In a move destined for failure, Siemens tried to trademark the name Zyklon in 2002, with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.

1
Congo Free State Genocide

Profiting from genocide and turning a blind eye to it is one thing, but only one organization has committed what can be called genocide for the sake of industry. Founded in 1885, by Leopold II, King of the Belgians, the Congo Free State garnered control over areas now known as the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi through a non-governmental organization, the Association Internationale Africaine. Leopold had acquired the Congo at the Berlin Conference of 1884, which was to regulate the European colonization of Africa. While under the pretense of conducting humanitarian efforts, e.g. building churches and educating the people, it established an industry of collecting ivory, en masse, using huge amounts of slave labor. Surveyors hired by Leopold found that the greatest riches that the tribes people could access was ivory. Employing the Force Publique (a combination of a police force, tax collector and gang of enforcers, who had been drafted from able-bodied Congolese men to serve the State),

the men would troop along rivers finding villages, separating the men, women and children (rape was exceedingly common) and telling the men that if they did not find a certain amount of ivory they would never see their families again, though a lot of the time the families had already died of disease. Collecting ivory became harder once the elephant population had been decimated, so the FP changed tactics to frightening the villagers away and taking any supplies left behind, then burning everything to the ground. The other chief export was rubber, Leopold wanted the workers to be proficient and highly motivated so this meant that failing to meet rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. The officers in charge of a particular village would have to bring the hands of those who didnt reach their quotas as proof that the officers hadnt used the bullets to hunt for food. Some soldiers cheated by simply cutting of the hand, and leaving them to die, saving ammunition. This even caused small wars between villages; hands had become a valuable item to have, as they can be handed into the officer when they couldnt fill their unrealistic quota. The entire control of the nation was put under very few people and King Leopold was the definite ruler (he ditched the faade of the Association Internationale Africaine soon into his rule). He directly maintained the country more than just about all other dictators before, and since, and it was his policy that for each bullet fired, a hand must be represented as proof it was used to kill a Congolese worker. This was purely for the sake of cost-cutting. He was running the most cost-efficient company the world had seen. The rubber and ivory industry was grinding to a halt due to the lack of motivation for slaves and the dwindling supply of ivory. Leopold was amassing severe debts, until the rubber boom of the 1890s, which was

needed for telegraph wire and car tyres. Rubber overtook ivory as the countrys main export, and profits went through the roof. Estimates of the number of deaths that King Leopold II and the Congo Free State caused range from 10 million to 22 million, both valid claims. It also should be noted that, at the time, Africas entire population was between 90 and 133 million people. The Congo Free State ended in 1908, after whispers of the crimes happening in the Congo became shouts. The Congo Reform Movement, which included among its members Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Booker T. Washington and Bertrand Russell, led a vigorous international movement against the mistreatment of the Congolese population. The European nations had finally decided that Leopold was abusing the Berlin Treaty, and so it was annexed to Belgium, who retained it until 1960. Leopold never intended to keep the nation for a long time, it was his twenty year get-rich-quick scheme, and it worked. Leopold died the wealthiest man in Europe after living the high-life, spending the massive profits on his favorite luxuries: expensive homes, yachts and teenage prostitutes. To learn more about the fascinating story of the Congo Free State I recommend watching the BBC Documentary White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

Posted by: Bhushan Anand Sathe

2013-03-07

Complaint ID:47106

I alongwith my wife and father are customers of State Bank of India, SNDT branch, Karve Road, Pune. There was a banner outside SBI Karvenagr branch that \'Lockers are available\'. Since we wanted a locker in SBI, we went inside the branch and met the manager there. My conversation with her goes like this Manager : How many FDs we have in State Bank of India. Me : Not in this branch but we have FDs amounting to Rs. xxxxxx in your SNDT Karve road branch since many years. Manager : No.. this is not sufficient. We have a list of people who have FDs of more than 12 lakhs in our branch. Me : Since we have accounts in many different banks since many years as that of with SBI, we have FDs in various banks. Manager : Then tell me when you are shifting those FDs to my branch Me : Why to break and shift these FDs in your bank since we are also customers of Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra since many years Mnager : We are here to do business so we require FDs if you want locker in our bank. Me : But locker is a Service provided by your bank and why it is like that for getting this service I have to keep something in your bank? and I am a customer of SBI since many years (about 15) and I have FDs in your other branch Manager : No but those FDs are in other branch not in my branch. Me : But its the same, I am a customer of SBI for 15 years and how can you discriminate like SBI branch 1 and SBI branch 2. So its like saying if you are staying in Maharashtra then you are Indian national and if you are staying in xxx state then you are not Indian. Does it matter in which Branch of SBI I hold account? Manager : Then you have another alternative, we have a SBI Life insurance policy where you have to pay 1 lakh per annum and you will get covered for next 10 years by insurance and you have to pay premium of 1 Lakh only for first 5 years. Also I assure that you will get about 12% returns after end of maturity period. Me : (After looking at the poster of that Insurance plan displayed in her cabin) Oh is it unit linked? Manager : Yes but you will get a good NAV at the end of maturity so its not like that you will loose your money. At least you will et 12-13% returns. Me : I am not interested in such type of talk like If you want to get Locker then you have to buy this or that. Just tell me whether I can get a locker here as a service by SBI? Manager : No then we have long wait list of people, you can come and ask in the month of June and if any locker is available then you may get it. Me : I said to manager that I dont want business like this and dont want locker here. Now my questions are : 1) Does SBI prmmote such unethical business practices? 2) If they hve HIDDEN agenda of telling people to shift their business from other banks to SBI and in turn they will do a MERCY of giving Locker service. 3) Does providing a locker fits in scope of business of SBI then why such give and take policy? 4) Is a customer of SBI at one branch is also a customer of SBI in other branch? If thats not the case.. then shall a person open multiple accounts in SBI in different branches to avil different services? Is it legal? I would like to know answers to above questions, if possible. I strongly condemn such a business policy and I request authorities to look into this. Please note that all this communication with manager is verbal and so

she is at no risk of law proceedings UNLESS any PROOF is available. So these things will continue forever hahaha. My mobile number is 098506 82197. Bhushan Sathe (Pune)