Wake up and smell the stale Coffee...

Sojourner Truth

A fashionable looking structure is coming up in between Tapti and Sabarmati with workers working on it day and night. While those who have struggled to find out what that structure would be now know what it is, many may still be quite ignorant of it. Well, it is yet another representative of neo-liberal capitalism, the Swiss food company Nestle with its Nescafe outlet making its presence felt in the University campus. To this day, many such Multi-national Corporations (Group 4, Coke and others) with disgraceful track record have made their presence felt in the campus. Do we need to let yet another one in?

In a world where consumer interest and profit making matter more than any ethics that affirm life, it is necessary for an academic community like the one we live in to keep its conscience clear and try not be subsumed completely into the logic of capital. It is important to reflect on who Nestle is. On what he is doing to millions of infants, hundreds of thousands of children and many more thousands of workers to meet the demands of his greed.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates, 1.5 million infants die around the world because of the absence of breastfeeding and in places where water is unsafe for drinking a bottlefed infant is 25 times more likely to die than a breastfed infant. Because of this, in 1981 a marketing code was introduced to regulate the marketing of breastmilk substitute. Nestle up till this day has violated this code. It has been at the forefront promoting artificial infant feeding and discouraging breastfeeding. Free samples and supplies are given to health care institutions to promote artificial infant feeding and no clear notification is given about the harmful effects of artificial infant feeding and the benefits of breastfeeding. Many women from poor socio-economic backgrounds, especially of the developing countries are misled and misinformed, and many newborn infants die of malnutrition. It is Nestle that sentences their death.

Recently, Nestle has been making its way into the “Zero Hunger” programme of the Brazilian government to eliminate hunger by promoting and giving away free samples of powdered milk which of course doesn’t come close to breast milk in terms of nutrition.

Nestle along with the state machinery is notorious for its actions against the interests of the workers. In Colombia, with the help of the state, Nestle first denied the workers their yearly raise, health plan, education assistance, and compensation for dismissals, along with other rights. Then through “pressure, blackmail and terror” they took away the job security of the workers. According to the worker’s union SINAL TRAINAL Nestle “massacred the workers' ability to work and robbed them of their rights, but gave them a few miserable dollars so that they can die slowly in misery and squalor”. It is also characteristic of big corporate houses like Nestle to ally themselves with para-military troops and other armed groups to suppress worker’s unions and assassinate their leaders. This is the case in countries like Colombia and Philippines.

The biggest chocolate producers in the world like Nestle and Cadbury acquire their cocoa from the cocoa plantations of Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of children work in these plantations under extremely severe conditions. Most of these children are slaves who have been trafficked from outside the country and are subject to all kinds of torture and punishments. In Ivory Coast there is an estimated 200,000 children working on cocoa plantations of whom 15,000 are slaves. In Indonesia atleast 700,000 work in 350,000 hectares of family-owned cocoa plantations.

Even if we are promised good coffee, as critical, thinking human beings we have a moral responsibility. A moral responsibility to say that we refuse to compromise with those institutions that live as parasites on human life. Therefore it is necessary to raise one’s voice against Nestle. The JNU Student’s Union, which in rhetoric upholds a critical stand towards neo-liberalism, needs to show in practice if it will take a stand against the Nescafe outlet instead of initiating it and giving it a space in the campus. Let it be known that you may remain silent today but the tomorrow will judge you for your inaction.

[Although posted now, it was written in March, 2004]