A Mini Case In 1998, Coca-Cola set up a bottling plant in Perumatti in the southern state of Kerala, India. Since then, local villagers have complained about the fall in the amount of water available to them and have blamed the fall in supplies on Coca-Cola who, they claim, uses up to a million liters per day at the plant. Coca-Cola claims that the shortage in the water is due to the lack of rains in the region. Coca-Cola even sends round tankers of water to the region to help the local community. Local farmers are claiming that their livelihood has been destroyed since the building of the plant and that the number of people working on the land has dropped considerably because they cannot survive. Following the cleaning of the bottles, waste sludge is produced that Coca-Cola has been disposing of on the land of local farmers, claiming it was a useful fertilize r. Following a BBC program, samples of the sludge were analyzed by scientists at the University of Exeter in the southwest of England and found to contain toxic chemicals including lead and cadmium, both of which can be harmful to humans. It suggested that there was little or no benefit of the sludge as a fertilize . Recent tests by the local state laboratories find that the levels of toxic chemicals are within safety levels but that it should not be used as a fertilizer. In a separate development, sales of Coca-Cola have been hit by suggestions that its drinks produced in India contained higher levels of pesticide residues than was healthy! A large number of bodies have joined in the local community's campaign demanding the plant be closed down and that tests be carried out on Coca-Cola to assess its safety. A lawsuit to this effect was thrown out in August, which prompted Coca-Cola to issue an angry comment claiming that the reports were scurrilous, unnecessarily scared large numbers of Coca-Cola's customers and put thousands of jobs in its plants throughout India at risk. Coca-Cola claims to employ in excess of 5,000 people in the country, not to mention the many thousands that are linked in some way to the product. Questions: 1) What is the concern of the local community? 2) What is the claim held by Coca-Cola about its waste sludge? 3) What is Coca-Cola's response toward the BBC program report? What do you think of it?