My family and I went to the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta for the first time six years ago. It was a joyful experience, even for a grumpy teenager who thought she was too cool for a museum. I found it to be interactive and inspiring. The museum featured a video titled “Moments of Happiness,” in which people from all different walks of life, religion, race, class and experience came together in the most harmonic of moments. Families and friends were laughing and enjoying the sunshine while building companionship with one another. However, a recent New York Times article by Megha Rajagopalan and Qadri Inzamam titled “The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies”revealed just how misleading “Moments of Happiness” was.
The article discloses the dire humanitarian conditions in the state of Maharashtra, India, where companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have created a sugar-growing powerhouse. An investigation from the New York Times and the Fuller Project records young girls working for sugar-cane growers supported by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. These girls are undergoing forced child marriages, hysterectomies, unlivable wages and manipulation from the public and private sectors.
Plutocratic, vampiric companies such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo exploit women and children’s bodies, souls and families for their own benefit. The greed of companies capitalizes on the most vulnerable in our world, and we, the privileged, must stop it. Capitalism chips away at humanity, and thus, it must be dismantled entirely.
Even worse, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are aware of the abuse happening on the ground in Maharashtra but still choose to profit off Indian citizens, despite the immoral circumstances there. In 2019, Coca-Cola consultants went to western India, reported that children were in the fields cutting sugar cane and completed their investigation into child labor with an interview from a 10-year-old girl. Despicably and without shame, Coca-Cola used a 10-year-old girl who “loves to go to school” by forcing her to work alongside her parents. Both companies have no guilt, and, as of December 2023, Coca-Colaeven decided to build a new factory in Maharashtra.
While child marriage is illegal in India and is frowned upon by international law, two incentives relating to the sugar industry encourage families to marry off their daughters. First, sugar-cutting is a two-person job, and having a spouse cutting sugar doubles the potential profit for a family. This is ironic considering that advanced mechanization and developing technology would eliminate the need for anyone to cut sugar to begin with. Yet, companies have not implemented the new technology, instead continuing their deplorable practices. This is another example of conglomerates squeezing every last penny and bead of sweat from the working class.
Secondly, selling young girls away to husbands relieves stress on families that are already living in poverty. Families break ties and loyalty in hopes of achieving economic security — dismally, many never find this security. A local government report from Beed, a rural region of Maharashtra, surveyed about 82,000 female sugar cane workers and found that one in five had a hysterectomy. Another report found that one in three had a hysterectomy. Everyone in the Maharashtra sugar industry, even doctors, buys into a capitalist system dominated by greed and hoggishly encourages women to get hysterectomies, sometimes after just their first or second period, by wrongfully misinforming them. The women are receiving intensive and potentially dangerous operations so that they do not have a period and can work more.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have created environments that pressure women to prioritize work over their health. They leverage their economic prowess to take advantage of the people on whom they rely. ARCHE Advisors, a group of auditors hired by Coca-Cola, found that the company reprehensibly did not provide toilets or shelter in the fields.
With Coca-Cola's headquarters near Emory University's campus, we can see how the company marginalizes and fragments communities. While in India, Coca-Cola’s main target is women. In Atlanta, it is Black and brown people. In 2022, Coca-Cola donated $1 million to the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is funding the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, colloquially known as Cop City. Cop City’s construction will force residents to live with over-policing and little economic mobility, adding structural limitations to minorities — despite the fact that officials cover this up with other supplementary jargon. This informal state-business coalition is the continued solidification of an Atlanta that is run by upper-class business executives who neglect Black and brown communities' liberties and exigency.
We look to the horrors abroad and see the most dramatic stories of avarice while forgetting to look right under our noses. No horror takes precedence over another, but all sets of injustices need to be evaluated in a system that prioritizes morality over profit.
As Emory students, we must take note of our privileges. We must question what lives and families were disrupted so we can have our inaugural, first-year Coke Toast and then decide what we choose to do about the problem at hand. Of course, we cannot single handedly change such a rooted system, but we can realize that working together bit-by-bit is the key to dismantling the rampant capitalism embedded within our society and our own city. Choose to divest where you can in industries and companies that exploit workers and individuals across the globe. Choose to vote in hope that one day, substantial change will be made. I choose to fight and write so that I just might find one person to join me.
The story of the women in Maharashtra is not new, and it certainly is not the only one of its kind. Reflect on your practices: Dissect what role you play in upholding a capitalist system that maltreats and manipulates so many individuals. Look at your positionality and amend all that is within your grasp.
Lola McGuire (26C) is from Nashville, Tenn.
