TM Krishna, Sofia Ashraf and Amrit Rao ask Unilever to ‘treat us like, we were white’ in a music video highlighting the company’s ‘environmental racism’. The video is a follow-up to 2016’s Kodaikanal Won’t, which sought to draw attention to the sad state of the waterbodies in and around Kodaikanal. The water bodies have been poisoned by discharge let out by a thermometer factory owned by the company. Following the popularity of this video, Unilever agreed to pay compensation to 591 workers who had been struggling for 14 years.
Following the compensation, activists asked the company to clean up the Pambar Shola (forest) in Kodaikanal. The company’s clean-up process ended up polluting the environment some more. This prompted Ashraf and music video director Rathindran Prasad to produce Kodaikanal Still Won’t.
“Though environmental clean-up work was taken up, its intensity was 20 times less than what they are supposed to do. This is what we call ‘environmental racism’ and we protest this, and demand the same standard that is applicable in developed countries. The new video is called Kodaikanal Still Won’t and aims to bring awareness about the present polluted environment in Kodai. We won’t rest until our demand is met,” director Rathindran Prasad told Deccan Chronicle.
Nityanand Jayaraman, an activist who has campaigned for the clean-up, says that Unilever’s sub-standard process would never be permitted abroad. “Such a shoddy clean-up process would never be permitted in Europe. Unilever’s refusal to apply the best standards for India reeks of environmental racism. Ignoring the failure of the trial remediation, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has given the go-ahead for a full-scale clean-up. If that happens, it will be nothing short of a major environmental disaster that will poison the watershed forests of the Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary.”
The video was shot in Kodaikanal with cinematography by Shreyas Krishna. It blends rap, carnatic music and gaana. Amrit Rao composed the song and Ashraf contributed the lyrics.
The music video was launched in Chennai last week.
