The Pharmakon of Coca Cola Capitalism: Paradigm of Thirst
The Pharmakon of Coca Cola Capitalism: Paradigm of Thirst
Isha Ambani Piramal’s Campa Cola Ventures: Unpacking Dynastic Capitalism in the Ambani-Piramal Empire
Posted on 21st September, 2025 (GMT 02:51 hrs)
ABSTRACT
This paper synthesizes a sustained conversation into a coherent, comprehensive, and rigorous research paper that maps the concept of Coca-Cola capitalism to concrete historical and contemporary case studies in India. The analysis traces the genealogy of the term, situates it within scholarship on globalization and cultural imperialism, and offers a detailed historical narrative on Coca-Cola’s presence in India: its arrival (1950), exit (1977) amid FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act) disputes, the growth of “indigenous” soft-drink alternatives, and Coca-Cola’s re-entry after economic liberalization (1993). The paper then examines the contemporary re-territorialization of the Coca-Cola model under Indian oligarchic capital—focusing on Reliance Consumer Products (Isha Ambani’s corporate sphere) and its acquisition and relaunch of legacy brands such as Campa and minority stakes in heritage regional companies (e.g., Sosyo). Ecological footprints of cold-drink production (water use, agricultural inputs, packaging waste, energy and emissions, and local social-ecological conflicts) are analyzed, alongside health hazards of carbonated soft drinks, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular risks. A critical examination of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, such as the Piramal Foundation’s Sarvajal RO water ATMs in the context of the Digwal case-study, highlights hypocritical dimensions in water governance amid industrial extraction. The paper argues that Reliance’s strategy constitutes a domesticated variant of Coca-Cola capitalism—what the paper terms Ambani-Cola capitalism—which mechanically reproduces branding, distribution, and extraction logics while reorienting profit streams to domestic oligopoly. Drawing on Zizekian ideology critique, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the Derridean interpretation of pharmakon, the analysis reveals the ideological surplus in commodified consumption. Policy implications and recommendations for environmental governance, community rights, competition policy, and corporate accountability are offered.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Conceptual Framework: Defining Coca-Cola Capitalism
- Literature Context
- Method and Scope
- Historical Development of Coca-Cola Capitalism (Global Overview)
- India as Case Study: Coca-Cola’s Arrival, Exit, and Re-entry
- 6.1 Arrival and Early Expansion (1950–1973)
- 6.2 FERA and Political Economy (1973)
- 6.3 Exit (1977) and the Rise of Indigenous Brands
- 6.4 Neoliberal Liberalization and Coca-Cola’s Re-entry (1989–1993)
- Ambani Cola Capitalism: Reliance Consumer Products, Campa, and Sosyo
- 7.1 Reliance’s Strategic Approach
- 7.2 Brand Acquisition as Market Entry
- 7.3 Distribution and Retail Leverage
- 7.4 Competitive and Regulatory Challenges
- Ecological Damages of Cold-Drink Production
- 8. Ecological Damages of Cold-Drink Production and the Ambani-Piramal Nexus
- 8.1 Pharmaceutical-Tied Toxicities: The Digwal Case
- 8.2 Water Extraction, RO Fetishism, and Groundwater Impacts
- 8.3 Agricultural and Resource Impacts (Sugarcane, Corn, Monoculture, Soil Degradation)
- 8.4 Biodiversity Loss
- 8.5 Air Pollution, Chemical Emissions, and Micro/Nanoparticle Contamination
- 8.6 Energy Use, Refrigeration, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- 8.7 Packaging and Plastic Pollution
- 8.8 Aquatic Toxicity and Eutrophication
- 8.9 Social-Ecological Conflict: Examples and Consequences
- 8.10 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Ambani-Piramal Water Governance Model
- 8.11 Comparative and Global Perspective: Localized Coca-Cola Capitalism
- Health Hazards of Carbonated Soft Drinks
- 9.1 Obesity and Weight Gain
- 9.2 Type 2 Diabetes
- 9.3 Cardiovascular Disease and Hypertension
- 9.4 Dental Health
- 9.5 Bone Health and Fractures
- 9.6 Kidney and Liver Issues
- 9.7 Mortality and Other Risks
- 9.8 Diet and Low-Calorie Variants
- 9.9 Linking Soft Drinks to the Pharmaceutical Industry and Cinematic Semiotics: A Pharmakon Perspective
- 9.10 A Critical Node or Note: Ambani-Piramal Kinship Capitalism: Mitakṣarā and Corporate Consolidation
- Mapping Coca-Cola Capitalism to Reliance’s Venture: Continuities and Ruptures
- 10.1 Ownership and Profit Capture: Foreign Multinationals vs Domestic Oligarchs
- 10.2 Branding and Cultural Politics: Nostalgia, Swadeshi Tropes, and Reterritorialization
- 10.3 Ecological Externalities and Governance Gaps
- Discussion: Political Economy Implications
- Recommendations and Policy Interventions
- Conclusion
1. Introduction
The glocalization of consumer culture and the transnational diffusion of brand capitalism have been widely critiqued by scholars of culture, political economy, and environmental studies. Within this discourse, Coca-Cola capitalism captures a distinctive formation of global capitalism in which multinational soft-drink corporations act as vectors of commodified modernity: they monopolize desire, standardize consumption, and establish distribution networks that penetrate the fabric of everyday life.
This paper reconstructs the genealogy of the term and places it in conversation with contemporary Indian developments, where the ownership of consumer brands has shifted from foreign multinationals to domestic conglomerates. The intervention of Reliance with regarding to the branding of “Campa Cola”— with Isha Ambani as a prominent corporate actor — offers a central case through which to understand how supposedly “global” brand logics survive, mutate, and consolidate under the co-opted guise of “local” capital.
In the post-industrial, MNC-dominated world, even the category of water can no longer be treated as singular or neutral. It has been subsumed into the commodified domain of soft drinks, a vast market that has hypnotized multiple generations through advertisements, slogans, and alluring taglines — the “added features” of capitalist desire. The factual world of Coca-Cola capitalism, as Slavoj Žižek (2002, 2009) has noted, operates less through the intrinsic qualities of its product than through a symbolic economy that structures craving, repetition, and dissatisfaction.
The research aim of this paper is framed with a deliberately reflexive gesture: it is composed in conditions of unprecedented high temperatures in the Kolkata delta, while the author sips — hypocritically — from a can of Coke, fully aware that the drink will not quench his thirst for long but instead dehydrate him further. This perpetual thirst (tṛṣṇā in Buddhism, taṇhā in Pali) encapsulates the essence of the Coke experience: the relentless cycle of desire, momentary satisfaction, and renewed craving.
At stake here is not subsistence but conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1899). Why, then, are human beings so drawn to a beverage that neither tastes conventionally “pleasing” nor provides any nutritional value? Žižek suggests that Coke embodies a paradoxical object: its taste is not inherently enjoyable, yet consumers remain addicted to it. Its slogans — “It’s the Real Thing,” “Can’t Beat the Feeling,” “Open Happiness” — reinforce the phantasma that the elusive “it” lies just beyond the act of drinking. Coke is less a beverage than an object-cause of desire: a mysterious, impersonal “it” that structures consumption through surplus enjoyment.
Yet this “surplus enjoyment” is not to be confused with jouissance as a creative, life-affirming excess. Here the present analysis departs from Žižek, turning instead to Rabindranath Tagore’s notion of “surplus idleness” (udbritta abasara), which envisions surplus not as compulsive consumption but as an aesthetic and ethical opening toward creativity and repose. By juxtaposing Coke’s endless paradigm of thirst with Tagore’s surplus idleness, the paper seeks to reframe the debate: from the compulsions of Coca-Cola capitalism to the possibilities of a different surplus — one not built on dehydration, addiction, and ecological plunder.
2. Conceptual Framework: Defining Coca-Cola Capitalism
Coca-Cola capitalism can be defined as a set of interlocking phenomena:
- Brand-driven capitalism — where the symbolic value of a product outweighs its material novelty;
- Deterritorialization and standardization of consumption — identical products marketed worldwide;
- Integration into primary resource systems — corporate supply chains extending deep into water, sugar, and energy infrastructures;
- Deployment of non-market instruments — advertising, soft power, and cultural framing used to legitimate market expansion.
These dimensions align across three analytical axes: cultural (branding and symbolic politics), economic (market structures, acquisitions, distribution), and ecological (resource extraction, pollution, waste).
From this perspective, “Cola” is no longer a mere beverage but an inseparable element of what Adorno and Horkheimer (1944/2002) called the culture industry: a mass-produced commodity, consumed across class lines, and disseminated globally through colossal advertising budgets — often surpassing those of technology giants like Apple or Microsoft.
The 1971 Coca-Cola advertisement “I’d like to teach the world to sing” epitomizes this hegemonizing thrust. Its fantasy of global harmony collapses difference into a branded sameness, performing what Jean-Luc Godard ironized in Masculin Féminin (1966) as the paradox of “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Here the soft drink becomes not just a commodity but an ideological device, staging a post-Cold War imaginary where consumption substitutes for solidarity.
The ideological stakes run deeper. As Žižek (2009) observes, Coca-Cola functions less as a drink than as a metaphorical signifier of America itself — a Peircean symbol for the American Dream. The inversion is striking: it is not that Coke reflects America, but rather America as neo-imperial power is embodied through Coke. The attraction lies not in Coke’s physical properties but in the values annexed to it: surplus enjoyment, the Lacanian objet petit a, the “unattainable” something-extra.
Yet the “surplus enjoyment” driving Coca-Cola and Ambani-Cola capitalism is inseparable from the paradigm of thirst — the tanhā or trsna described in Buddhist philosophy, a relentless craving that structures human suffering. In the consumer society, this thirst is industrialized: it is thirst for sugar, brand identity, and the ephemeral pleasure of consumption. It produces desire without end, compelling repeated engagement with products that promise satisfaction yet deliver only more longing. Spinoza’s philosophy complements this analysis: human beings are oriented toward objects of desire (objectum desiderii), but under industrial capitalism, the objects themselves are designed to perpetually frustrate fulfillment, turning desire into a mechanism of control and commodification. Unlike Žižekian jouissance, which can be a paradoxical source of creative energy, the capitalist surplus here is corrosive: it amplifies craving, drives ecological extraction, and monetizes dependence. The thirst is systemic, shaping both bodies and environments into vessels of consumption, entrenching cycles of addiction, exploitation, and harm.
By contrast, Tagore’s notion of “surplus idleness” (udbritta abasara) offers an ethical and aesthetic antidote to this paradigm of thirst. Where Coca-Cola capitalism converts desire into compulsive consumption, surplus idleness cultivates spaces of reflection, repose, and creative fulfillment — excess that does not exploit bodies, communities, or ecosystems. In Tagore’s framework, longing can be transformed: rather than being monetized and depleted, it can inspire contemplation, play, and engagement with life in ways that are regenerative rather than extractive. Juxtaposing these logics highlights a radical divergence: industrialized thirst commodifies and exploits desire, whereas surplus idleness nurtures it, offering the possibility of a social and ecological surplus that sustains life, creativity, and ethical imagination. In the Indian context, this reframes the critique of Ambani-Cola capitalism: not merely as environmental or health harm, but as a structural manipulation of desire — a Spinozist objectum desiderii deliberately engineered to reproduce craving — that could, in theory, be reoriented toward human and ecological flourishing.
This surplus reveals itself in Coke’s paradoxes. When chilled, it is marketed as “refreshing”; when warmed to room temperature, it becomes “undrinkable,” nearly excremental (Žižek, 2009). Its temporally conditioned transience demands instantaneous consumption — thirst must be gratified now, before the magic evaporates. Taglines such as “Open Happiness” or “Delicious and Refreshing” promise happiness as an objective property of the drink itself. But how can this be explained in sugar-free “diet” versions of Coke, which strip away even the presumed biochemical basis of pleasure? This paradox exemplifies Marx’s insistence that a commodity is never merely a commodity: it always carries a surplus beyond its use-value.
Žižek (2006) reads this through Lacan: the Coke is a sublime object of ideology, its surplus enjoyment offering not an escape from reality but the illusion that the status quo itself is escape. In this sense, Coca-Cola capitalism represents both a social psychosis and an environmental psychosis, foreclosing alternatives to its own consumptive logic.
To sharpen the contrast between the commodified “paradigm of thirst” and alternative, culturally rooted responses, consider the coconut—a natural, nourishing beverage that has been overshadowed by the rise of Coca-Cola capitalism.
Despite its health benefits, coconut water remains a niche product compared to the global dominance of Coca-Cola. The global coconut industry is valued at approximately US$3.88 billion, while Coca-Cola’s market capitalization exceeds US$221 billion. This disparity underscores how cultural hegemony distorts not only consumer preferences but also ecological economies. Consumers in neoliberal markets overwhelmingly favor Coca-Cola over coconut water, condemning a natural source of replenishment in favor of the spectacular commodity.
This contrast is not merely abstract. Acarya Prafulla Chandra Ray, the renowned chemist of Presidency College, Kolkata, once devised a “coconut drink” for students: cheap, nourishing, hydrating, enriched with slices of coconut meat. Gandhi is said to have broken one of his fasts with this drink, now sold at Paramount (formerly Paradise) in Kolkata. Its story exemplifies a local, sustainable response to thirst—one eclipsed by the spectacular rise of Coca-Cola capitalism.
In recent years, however, flavored coconut water drinks have been gaining popularity. The global flavored coconut water market was valued at USD 2.5 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12% from 2024 to 2030. This surge indicates a shift in consumer preferences towards healthier, natural alternatives to sugary sodas. However, it’s essential to note that the commodification of coconut water, even in its flavored form, may still perpetuate the same capitalist structures that prioritize profit over ecological and social well-being.
This trend highlights a complex dynamic: while flavored coconut water offers a healthier alternative to traditional sodas, it also reflects the broader commodification of natural resources. The challenge lies in ensuring that such products are produced and consumed in ways that genuinely benefit local communities and ecosystems, rather than merely serving as another avenue for capitalist exploitation.
The contrast between the coconut and Coca-Cola serves as a poignant example of how cultural and economic forces shape our consumption patterns. While flavored coconut water may offer a healthier choice, it also underscores the need for critical examination of the systems that produce and promote such commodities.
Thus, the framework here situates Coke not simply as a beverage but as an ideological pharmakon: simultaneously thirst-inducing and thirst-relieving, alluring and destructive, a signifier of happiness that delivers dehydration. In its very paradox lies the secret of Coca-Cola capitalism.
3. Literature Context
This concept engages with multiple scholarly traditions:
- Cultural imperialism and soft power;
- Globalization and consumer culture, including Appadurai’s work on global flows and mediascapes;
- George Ritzer’s McDonaldization framework, with its focus on efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control;
- Analyses of neoliberal globalization and brand capitalism, examining how brands capture desire and restructure markets;
- Environmental justice scholarship, documenting the externalities of extractive commodity chains such as water privatization, industrial pollution, and packaging waste.
While this paper does not provide a comprehensive bibliographic apparatus within the main text, it draws on these literatures to frame its analysis and interpret empirical developments in India. One might recall the scene in Goodbye Lenin (2003), where an enormous Coca-Cola hoarding is erected in front of an elderly Communist woman who, having suffered memory loss and being unaware of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, is taken aback by the advertisement’s sudden presence—an emblematic moment of the intrusion of global consumer culture into a previously insulated social and ideological space.
4. Method and Scope
This manuscript emerges from a dialogue combining conceptual reflection with historically specific claims—dates, legislative facts, and recent corporate developments. The method is a qualitative synthesis: discourse analysis of the conversation, integrated with historically salient events to construct a coherent narrative. The scope focuses on India as a case study of global brand diffusion, with Reliance’s strategic moves serving as a proximate example of the domestic re-territorialization of Coca-Cola capitalism. The paper is primarily analytic and normative rather than empirical in the sense of original fieldwork, intended for scholars, students, and civil society actors.
Central to this analysis is the concept of pharmakon, as revisited by Derrida (1981): a substance that is simultaneously remedy and poison. This undecidability resonates with the ancient Indian principle of viṣasya viṣa mahauṣadham (Kashyap, 2019), wherein a single agent can function as both cure and toxin. Coca-Cola itself becomes emblematic of this logic: is it a medicine for headache, a refreshment, an ideological device, or all of these at once? Likewise, what is a “cure” when it is administered by the very institutions that produce the underlying pathology? In this sense, soft drinks and pharmaceuticals both exemplify a pharmakon: offering utility while reinforcing systemic dependencies, from the antibiotic apocalypse to the structural dynamics of the so-called “death industry.”
The convergence of corporate tycoons Ambani and Piramal exemplifies this pharmakon logic in contemporary India. While Piramal’s Digwal pharmaceutical plant, and his social enterprise Sarvajal’s RO-based water purification network, highlight engagement with health and water infrastructure, Reliance—under Mukesh Ambani and in the name of his daughter Isha Ambani—has revived legacy cola brands such as Campa under domestic nationalist frames. Though no formal joint ventures between Piramal and Reliance in “cola + water purification” are publicly documented, structural synergies link their operations: water scarcity constrains bottling and drives purification demand, while sugar-related health burdens feed into broader healthcare markets where large conglomerates are active.
This “Ambani-Piramal configuration” illustrates how a single oligarchic ecosystem internalizes both toxin production and remediation. Its power does not rely on formal collusion but on the alignment of interests across sectors, branding strategies, resource extraction, and socially sanctioned legitimacy. Pharmaceuticals, soft drinks, land-use, corporate networks, community life, and nature are thus interwoven into a technocratic-industrial complex, revealing the contemporary manifestation of pharmakon logic within India’s hyperindustrial and commodity-fetishized economy (Illich, 1973/1974; Marx, 1887/1954).
5. Historical Development of Coca-Cola Capitalism (Global Overview)
Origins (late 19th–early 20th century): Coca-Cola was invented in the United States in 1886 by Colonel John Pemberton, initially as a medicinal remedy intended to address his morphine addiction. The original formula combined carbonated water, coca leaves (cocaine), and kola nuts (caffeine), later supplemented with high-fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, and sometimes citric acid, alongside a proprietary “secret ingredient.” Over 130 years, Coca-Cola evolved from a medicinal tonic into a soft drink emblematic of American capitalism, modernity, and urban life, carrying immense ideological and representational weight (Coca-Cola History, n.d.).
World War II: Coca-Cola’s global expansion accelerated during WWII, as the company supplied US troops overseas, establishing a worldwide bottling network and reinforcing the beverage as a symbol of American presence and modernity.
Cold War: Coke and Pepsi became ideological proxies in the Cold War, representing American consumer modernity in contrast to Soviet austerity. The “cola wars” also illustrated the competitive drive for market share and symbolic dominance.
Postwar globalization (1950s–1980s): Marketing campaigns emphasized universal emotions—happiness, youth, friendship—deterritorializing Coca-Cola and fostering a homogenized, transnational brand experience.
Neoliberal era (1990s onward): Coca-Cola capitalism consolidated under neoliberal globalization, marked by acquisitions, financialization, and global supply chain integration.
Critiques (late 20th–21st century): Environmental justice and public health critiques highlight the ecological, cultural, and health costs of the soft-drink industry. Coca-Cola’s operations consume enormous quantities of water (1.97 liters per liter of product in 2022; Statista, 2023), generate significant single-use plastic, aluminum, and cardboard waste, and contribute substantially to GHG emissions (5.56 million metric tons in 2022; Statista, 2023). Production of sugarcane and palm oil drives deforestation, while caffeine extraction, phosphoric acid mining, and caramel coloring release pollutants, contaminate water, and degrade habitats. Initiatives such as water replenishment programs, CO₂-infused bottle tops, and HFC refrigerators represent partial “green” solutions but fail to address systemic environmental harms, instead reinforcing corporate greenwashing and profitability (Pigott, 2023; MacDonald, 2021).
Coca-Cola capitalism, in sum, exemplifies a global industrial and ideological apparatus in which consumption, health, and environmental externalities are tightly entwined, offering utility while simultaneously producing ecological and social costs—a quintessential illustration of the pharmakon logic explored in this study.
6. India as Case Study: Coca-Cola’s Arrival, Exit, and Re-entry
India provides a compact yet illustrative case of how Coca-Cola capitalism interacts with local sovereignty, regulatory frameworks, and various stages of neoliberal liberalization.
6.1 Arrival and Early Expansion (1950–1973)
Coca-Cola entered India in 1950, initially expanding within urban markets. The brand symbolized modernity and the allure of imported consumer culture. At the same time, India’s early post-Independence economy was heavily regulated and guided by a mixed-economy model, reflecting scepticism toward foreign capital.
6.2 FERA and Political Economy (1973)
The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) of 1973 institutionalized India’s postcolonial economic nationalism. It required multinational companies to limit foreign equity—commonly interpreted as a 40% cap—and to share certain technologies with Indian partners. Coca-Cola resisted these measures, particularly the disclosure of its secret formula, creating a central point of regulatory conflict. FERA embodied both a political imperative to safeguard economic sovereignty and a broader discursive framing of foreign firms as potential threats to local autonomy.
6.3 Exit (1977) and the Rise of Indigenous Brands
In 1977, Coca-Cola exited India after repeatedly refusing to comply with FERA requirements. Its departure created space for domestic brands such as Parle’s Thums Up and Limca, along with regional products like Gold Spot and Campa, to expand their market share and visibility. The exit has often been interpreted as a validation of so-called “Swadeshi” impulses—an assertion of Indian control over consumer markets and domestic industrial capacity. Yet appearances can be misleading: in a market-dominated global order, the symbolic triumph of nationalism may obscure the structural dynamics and dependencies that continue to shape production, distribution, and consumption.
6.4 Neoliberal Liberalization and Re-entry (1989–1993)
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, India faced a balance-of-payments crisis and embraced structural economic reforms. Initiated under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in 1991, liberalization dismantled barriers to foreign investment, reduced tariffs, and encouraged privatization. PepsiCo entered India in 1989 through a joint venture, while Coca-Cola re-entered in 1993 by acquiring Parle Exports’ domestic brands—including Thums Up, Limca, and Gold Spot—for approximately $60 million. This strategic acquisition allowed Coca-Cola to circumvent initial market entry barriers and capitalize on established local tastes, marking a key moment in the reassertion of multinational dominance.
The Indian experience illustrates how regulatory frameworks, political sovereignty, and neoliberal policies shaped the trajectory of global brands. Understanding this history also provides context for linking the Coca-Cola narrative to the broader analyses of soft-drink capitalism in India.
7. Ambani Cola Capitalism: Reliance Consumer Products, Campa, and Sosyo
In recent years, India’s soft-drink sector has witnessed the resurgence of domestic capital challenging multinational incumbents, exemplified by Reliance Consumer Products Limited (RCPL), the FMCG arm of Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL). Led in part by Isha Ambani, RCPL has pursued aggressive expansion into beverages, leveraging Reliance’s integrated ecosystem of retail, logistics, and digital platforms to disrupt entrenched markets. This strategy exemplifies what may be termed “Ambani-Cola capitalism,” in which global-style consumerism, mass marketing, and monopolistic infrastructure are deployed under a domestically-nationalist guise.
7.1 Campa Cola: Origins, Decline, and Revival
As already noted above, Campa Cola emerged in the late 1970s as a patriotic Indian alternative after Coca-Cola exited India under the 1977 Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA). Owned by Pure Drinks Group, Campa’s branding—“The Great Indian Taste”—resonated with postcolonial assertions of advertized self-reliance and import substitution. Its popular variants, including Campa Orange and Lemon, dominated the domestic market through the 1980s. However, liberalization in the early 1990s allowed Coca-Cola (1993) and PepsiCo (1989) to re-enter India with superior capital, marketing, and supply chains. Campa’s bottling infrastructure faltered, leaving the brand largely absent by the early 2000s.
In August 2022, Reliance acquired Campa Cola from Pure Drinks Group for ₹22 crore, relaunching it in March 2023 in Cola, Lemon, and Orange variants. The relaunch fused nostalgia and nationalism, positioning Campa as a “home-grown” alternative to foreign colas, beginning in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana before expanding nationally.
7.2 Strategic Approach and Distribution
Reliance undercut multinational rivals with aggressive pricing: Campa bottles range from ₹10 upwards, targeting price-sensitive rural and Tier II/III markets. Distribution leverages Reliance’s extensive retail footprint, including over 18,900 stores, JioMart platforms, kirana shop partnerships, and wholesale tie-ups with Flipkart Wholesale. Vertical integration enables cost efficiencies, rapid scaling, and coordinated marketing. RCPL has also expanded internationally, with exports to the UAE and Nepal, signaling ambitions beyond India.
7.3 Brand Acquisition and Nostalgia
RCPL’s market entry strategy emphasizes heritage branding. The acquisition of Campa and a 50% stake in century-old Sosyo Hajoori Beverages Private Limited (Gujarat) revives iconic “Swadeshi” brands, capitalizing on nostalgia while embedding them in Reliance’s ecosystem. This mirrors Coca-Cola’s historical tactics of brand dominance through both global reach and symbolic appeal.
7.4 Production and Infrastructure Expansion
Reliance invested heavily in bottling capacity: facilities in Guwahati, Assam, and Begusarai, Bihar, totaling investments of ₹6,000–8,000 crore, enable high-volume production for domestic and export markets. The scale and efficiency replicate Coca-Cola’s structural model while projecting domestic ownership and nationalist branding.
7.5 Market Performance and Competitive Dynamics
By mid-2025, Campa attained significant traction: 14% market share in key cities, double-digit penetration in states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and over ₹1,000 crore revenue. Competition from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo has intensified “cola wars,” while RCPL navigates regulatory scrutiny over potential market dominance.
7.6 Nostalgia, Nationalism, and Ambani Coca-Cola Capitalism
Campa’s revival demonstrates both rupture and continuity. Symbolically, it represents a nationalist, domestic alternative to foreign brands; materially, it reproduces the extractive logic of global soft-drink capitalism—high water use, sugar procurement, plastic packaging, and environmental impacts remain structurally unchanged. Reliance’s vertical integration, aggressive pricing, and brand revival illustrate an “Indian Coca-Cola capitalism,” where local memory and nationalism legitimize practices that replicate the same ecological and market dynamics as multinational operations.
8. Ecological Damages of Cold-Drink Production and the Ambani-Piramal Nexus
The soft-drink industry in India—including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Reliance Consumer Products Ltd. (RCPL)—imposes profound environmental burdens. Production demands vast resources, generates negative externalities, and disproportionately affects marginalized communities, particularly in water-scarce regions. These harms are amplified when the soft-drink sector overlaps with industrial-scale pharmaceutical production, as in Digwal, Telangana, highlighting the structural convergence of oligarchic capital in Ambani-Cola capitalism.
8.1 Pharmaceutical-Tied Toxicities: The Digwal Case
The Indian pharmaceutical sector, celebrated as the “pharmacy of the Global South,” masks a toxic underside. In clusters like Digwal headed by the Piramal Pharma (Note: Mr. Piramal is the secondary kin of Mr. Mukesh Ambani) , effluents containing heavy metals, solvents, and active pharmaceutical ingredients contaminate soil and groundwater. Local aquifers are poisoned, livestock die, and agricultural livelihoods are devastated. Residents report skin lesions, cardiovascular or respiratory disorders, and reproductive health problems—instances of “slow violence” largely invisible in official records but shaping everyday survival.
Consumption itself is ecologically consequential: unmetabolized drugs enter rivers and groundwater via wastewater, while antibiotics accelerate antimicrobial resistance (AMR). What was designed to cure illness circulates back as a systemic public health and ecological threat. Here, the pharmakon logic is evident: the very products meant to heal also harm. This pattern of ecological externalization extends to the soft-drink sector.
8.2 Water Extraction and RO Fetishism
Soft-drink production consumes three to four liters of water per liter of beverage. Coca-Cola’s Plachimada plant extracted up to 500,000 liters daily, lowering groundwater levels by ten meters (2000–2005) and rendering local wells unusable. Similar over-extraction has been observed in Mehdiganj and other bottling sites, displacing agriculture and increasing vulnerability to drought.
Piramal Sarvajal, under the Piramal Foundation, operates solar-powered, IoT-enabled RO water ATMs providing “safe water for all” including the ones in Digwal. Hub & Spoke networks deploy centralized purification units supplying up to ten ATMs, with automated dispensing via RFID cards. While serving over 100,000 beneficiaries, these initiatives mask industrial extraction in nearby Digwal pharmaceutical plants. RO purification itself is ambivalent: it wastes three to four liters per liter purified, strips essential minerals, and produces a simulacrum of “purity” that is nutritionally and ecologically impoverished. CSR projects like these function as greenwashing, displacing state responsibility while legitimizing oligarchic control over water.
8.3 Agricultural and Resource Impacts
Sugarcane and high-fructose corn syrup for soft drinks promote water-intensive monocultures, depleting aquifers and degrading soil. Fertilizer and pesticide use further harms soil fertility and microbial biodiversity. In Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and other states, irrigation competition displaces food crops and increases vulnerability to climate shocks. Pharmaceutical production similarly requires water and chemical inputs, linking the resource intensity of soft drinks to the broader oligarchic industrial ecosystem.
8.4 Biodiversity Loss
Large-scale plantations and industrial effluents fragment habitats, reducing both terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. In Digwal and other pharmaceutical clusters, reports indicate declining local flora and fauna populations.
8.5 Air Pollution and Chemical Emissions
CO₂ emissions from carbonation are only part of the story. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from caramel coloring, solvents, and other chemical intermediates degrade air quality. Transport logistics for raw materials and finished products contribute additional particulate matter and NOx emissions, affecting local communities.
8.6 Energy, Refrigeration, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Manufacturing, cold-chain logistics, and CO₂ carbonation are energy-intensive. Refrigerants such as HFCs amplify greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change. Embedded emissions in supply chains—including fertilizer production, electricity for pumps and bottling, packaging production, and long-haul transport—add to the lifecycle carbon footprint.
8.7 Packaging and Plastic Pollution
Single-use plastics dominate soft-drink packaging. PET bottles, aluminum cans, and cartons contribute to microplastic pollution, landfill overflow, and marine debris. Low recycling rates exacerbate soil and water contamination. Nanoparticles from pharmaceuticals also enter water systems, persisting ecologically.
8.8 Aquatic Toxicity and Eutrophication
Runoff from sugarcane fields (fertilizers) and pharmaceutical effluents leads to eutrophication in rivers and lakes. Antibiotics, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and heavy metals in waterways disrupt aquatic ecosystems, affecting fish populations and human nutrition downstream.
8.9 Social-Ecological Conflict
Local communities bear the brunt of extraction and pollution. Plachimada protests (2002–2004) led to plant closure amid water and health concerns. Similar conflicts in Sivagangai, Varanasi, and Digwal reveal intersecting caste, gender, and class inequities. Farmers lose livelihoods, women shoulder water scarcity burdens, and marginalized populations disproportionately experience health impacts—classic environmental justice challenges.
8.10 CSR, Ambani-Cola Capitalism, and the Pharmakon Logic
Reliance and Piramal enterprises together exemplify the Ambani Cola capitalism model. RCPL’s soft-drink operations (e.g., Campa Cola) and Piramal Sarvajal’s RO water projects operate in tandem: extraction and remediation are structurally intertwined. The “cure” (RO water) simultaneously legitimizes and obscures the ecological harm caused by production. Similarly, sugar, soft drinks, and pharmaceuticals act as pharmaka—commodities that promise refreshment, health, or prosperity while reproducing environmental stress, social inequities, and public health threats.
By embedding nostalgia-driven, nationalist branding (Campa Cola revival) into integrated retail and distribution networks, Reliance replicates Coca-Cola’s industrial and marketing logic domestically. Vertical integration, aggressive pricing, and control over water-intensive supply chains reinforce ecological externalities even as CSR narratives construct an image of corporate responsibility. In this sense, ecological harms are not incidental but central to the political economy of Ambani-Piramal capitalism: extraction, commodification, and remediation are inseparable from profit-making.
8.11 Comparative and Global Perspective
These dynamics echo global patterns: Coca-Cola’s operations in Mexico, Africa, and Southeast Asia exhibit similar over-extraction, effluent contamination, and CSR-driven legitimacy. Ambani-Coca capitalism is thus a localized variant of global soft-drink industrial ecology, combining oligarchic control, environmental extraction, and cultural-symbolic branding. India’s case demonstrates how domestic conglomerates adopt global strategies, yet frame them under nationalist and heritage-oriented narratives to gain legitimacy.
9. Health Hazards of Carbonated Soft Drinks
Carbonated soft drinks, including cola and Pepsi variants, pose substantial public health risks due to high sugar content, additives, and other ingredients. These beverages are a leading source of added sugars worldwide, contributing to chronic diseases. Regular and diet versions alike are implicated in type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, kidney and liver disorders, osteoporosis, and dental decay (WebMD Editorial Contributors, 2023). The sugary undertone of cola also elevates risks for pancreatic cancer and kidney stones. The soft-drink industry thus indirectly supports the pharmaceutical sector: the proliferation of diet- and lifestyle-related diseases drives demand for medicines. Gandhi (1915/1997) observed a similar dynamic in Hind Swaraj, critiquing physicians as institutional agents who profit from the persistence of disease.
9.1 Obesity and Weight Gain
High-calorie, low-satiety beverages lead to overconsumption. Meta-analyses show positive correlations across cross-sectional (r=0.05), longitudinal (r=0.09), and experimental studies (r=0.24). For example, one daily 150-calorie drink could yield a 5-pound annual weight gain without dietary compensation. In the U.S., sugary drinks contribute 9% of daily calories, with 5% of adults consuming over 567 kcal daily, significantly exceeding recommended intake.
9.2 Type 2 Diabetes
Daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages doubles the risk of type 2 diabetes (NHS Women’s Health Study: 91,249 participants, 8 years), independent of BMI adjustments. High fructose and sucrose intake—up to 122–159 grams daily in children—drives this risk, making sugary drinks a primary contributor to rising diabetes prevalence.
9.3 Cardiovascular Disease and Hypertension
Soft drinks exacerbate cardiovascular risk via obesity and direct metabolic effects. Experimental data show increased systolic and diastolic blood pressure over 10 weeks of sucrose-sweetened beverage consumption. Diet sodas also elevate risks, e.g., higher atrial fibrillation incidence with one daily serving.
9.4 Dental Health
Acidic, sugary beverages erode enamel and promote caries, with meta-analytic evidence showing a positive association (r=0.03). Diet variants show reduced risk but still offer no nutritional benefit.
9.5 Bone Health and Fractures
Phosphoric acid in cola may reduce calcium availability, correlating with lower bone mineral density (r=-0.03) and higher fracture risk (r=0.06). Hypocalcemia associations (r=0.38) highlight potential long-term skeletal impacts.
9.6 Kidney and Liver Issues
Sugary drinks increase urinary/kidney stone risk (r=0.05). Diet sodas are linked to gradual renal function decline. Chronic consumption over 5–7 years can induce nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, raising susceptibility to diabetes and cardiovascular disorders.
9.7 Mortality and Other Risks
Two daily servings are associated with a 17% increase in premature mortality, more pronounced in women. Aspartame in diet sodas has suggested links to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and leukemia, while high-fructose intake contributes to gout.
9.8 Diet and Low-Calorie Variants
Diet sodas lack calories but do not confer nutritional benefit. Artificial sweeteners may have cancer links and do not reliably mitigate obesity or metabolic risks.
9.9 Linking Soft Drinks to the Pharmaceutical Industry and Cinematic Semiotics: A Pharmakon Perspective
The health consequences of soft-drink consumption reinforce pharmaceutical markets, creating a cycle where induced illnesses generate demand for treatments. This dynamic embodies Derrida’s (1981) pharmakon: Coke as both remedy (quenching thirst or providing temporary relief) and poison (causing chronic illnesses). Ancient Indian medicine captures a similar logic: viṣasya viṣa mahauṣadham (Kashyap, 2019), where poison can function as cure amid undecidable polysemy. In contemporary India, the Digwal case exemplifies this industrial-pharmakon nexus: Piramal’s pharmaceutical operations exacerbate health risks while CSR interventions, like RO water ATMs, offer partial, symbolic remedies. Together, soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, and water infrastructure coalesce into a hyperindustrial ecosystem of commodity and energy fetishism (Illich, 1973/1974; Marx, 1887/1954).
Cinema often reflects the ideological saturation of Coca-Cola capitalism, revealing how symbolic and ecological critiques converge in popular imagination. In Superman II (1980), during the climactic showdown between Superman and General Zod, Zod is hurled through a massive Coca-Cola billboard in Metropolis. This is not mere set dressing or slapstick spectacle; the billboard’s presence is emblematic. The Coca-Cola logo dominates the urban skyline, signaling the omnipresence of corporate branding even amid a cosmic battle between heroism and villainy. Such placement naturalizes consumer culture as an inseparable backdrop of everyday life, underscoring how commercial imagery saturates the environments in which human and superhuman narratives unfold. Notably, this and other high-profile product placements (e.g., Marlboro, Cutty Sark) in superhero films drew congressional attention in the 1980s, reflecting broader concerns about advertising’s reach into cultural imagination.
The allegorical dimension deepens in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), where Superman gathers the world’s nuclear weapons and hurls them into the sun. This superheroic fantasy mirrors the ecological logic of corporate capitalism: just as Superman externalizes nuclear destruction into space, global soft-drink corporations externalize environmental costs—groundwater depletion, plastic pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions—onto marginalized landscapes and invisible ecological margins. The fantasy of “problem solved” masks the persistence of structural harms, echoing real-world patterns in Plachimada, Digwal, and other sites of industrial extraction.
In this cinematic reading, the Coca-Cola billboard functions as more than a brand—it is a metaphor for the symbolic colonization of public space, desire, and ecological imagination. Superman’s clash with Zod, mediated through corporate signage, exemplifies how ecological and ideological critiques can be refracted through narrative spectacle: even in moments of heroism, the infrastructures of consumer capitalism remain omnipresent, normalized, and largely unchallenged.
Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! (2003) offers another allegory. A Coca-Cola billboard in post-Wall East Berlin shocks the protagonist, symbolizing the sudden colonization of everyday life by capitalist consumer culture. Similarly, Coca-Cola’s re-entry into India in 1993 transformed public space virtually overnight: billboards, cricket sponsorships, and TV ads signaled systemic change more viscerally than policy or law.
9.10 A Critical Node or Note: Ambani-Piramal Kinship Capitalism: Mitakṣarā and Corporate Consolidation
Isha Ambani’s stewardship of Reliance Consumer Products and the revival of Campa Cola must be read against this dual register of ecological critique and cinematic allegory. While the ecological footprint—large-scale water withdrawal, sugarcane monocultures, energy-intensive bottling, and plastic packaging—remains structurally identical to Coke, the symbolic politics shift. Reliance mobilizes nostalgia and swadeshi tropes to domesticate the same capitalist logic.
The marriage of Isha Ambani and Anand Piramal exemplifies a contemporary form of dynastic capitalism, where business strategy and familial alliances converge. This kinship operates as a modern iteration of mitakṣarā property logic: traditionally, Hindu joint-family law distributes assets collectively among heirs, emphasizing shared authority and resource pooling. In the corporate sphere, this principle translates into a strategic consolidation of wealth, control, and influence across multiple sectors—consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and industrial conglomerates—under the umbrella of interconnected family empires.
Isha Ambani Piramal’s leadership of Reliance Consumer Products, particularly the revival of Campa Cola, represents a domestication of Coca-Cola capitalism. By resurrecting a legacy Indian brand, she mobilizes nostalgia and swadeshi tropes, embedding Ambani control over a formerly globalized consumer space. The acquisition and expansion of Campa Cola mirror the mitakṣarā principle of pooling family resources for collective enterprise: profits, brand authority, and distribution networks circulate within the kinship nexus, consolidating domestic market power while maintaining the ecological and health costs of industrial-scale soft-drink production.
Anand Piramal, as Executive Director of the Piramal Group, suggestively oversees pharmaceutical operations with extensive environmental footprints. The Digwal facility exemplifies how industrial extraction—water-intensive production, chemical effluents, and toxic waste—intersects with kinship capitalism. While CSR initiatives like water purification RO ATMs attempt to mediate harm, these projects often function as symbolic remedies rather than structural solutions, reinforcing a pharmakon logic: corporate activity generates harm even as it markets remediation. Through familial networks, such operations are strategically shielded, distributing both profit and accountability within the Ambani-Piramal complex.
Reliance Industries, under Mukesh Ambani, leverages this kinship network to consolidate control across telecommunications, retail, energy, and FMCG sectors. The Campa Cola revival is part of a broader strategy: a domestic oligopoly that absorbs cultural critique and ecological costs into a localized capitalist fantasy. This mirrors the mitakṣarā ethos of expanding family wealth and influence through multiple ventures, ensuring the intergenerational transmission of both economic power and corporate governance.
The Isha-Anand union institutionalizes a cross-family oligarchic alliance: Ambani-Piramal kinship operates as a shielded economic bloc, leveraging nepotism to control key sectors while minimizing competition. This kinship capitalism exemplifies how familial ties concentrate market power, regulatory influence, and social legitimacy, effectively shaping political economy structures in India. The alliance blurs the lines between private capital and state facilitation, enabling ecological, health, and labor externalities to persist largely unchallenged.
The Ambani-Piramal nexus exemplifies mitakṣarā capitalism in a hyperindustrial context: inheritance, marriage, and kinship function as instruments of corporate consolidation, market domination, and socio-ecological control. Across Campa Cola, Piramal Pharma, and Reliance Industries, family alliances institutionalize an oligarchic-nationalist form of capitalism, where ecological degradation, public health externalities, and monopolistic power are reproduced through intergenerational kinship strategies. This model demonstrates how dynastic ties and corporate governance intertwine, creating a structurally resilient, privatized, and politically shielded economic complex.
In this sense, Reliance’s Campa revival is less a rupture with Coca-Cola capitalism than a reterritorialization: the “superheroic” fantasy of ecological problem-solving, the sudden visual shock of brand saturation, and the material realities of industrial production converge. The outcome in India is what this paper terms Ambani-Cola capitalism: a domestic oligarchic variant that perpetuates ecological externalities while redirecting symbolic, political, and financial capital into nationalized, yet still extractive, corporate hands.
10. Mapping Coca-Cola Capitalism to Reliance’s Venture: Continuities and Ruptures
The resurgence of Campa Cola under Reliance is not merely a commercial strategy; it represents a deeper ideological mutation of what can be termed Coca-Cola capitalism. In Appadurai’s (1996) terms, the global flow of commodities, images, and ideologies produces “scapes” — ethnoscapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, and financescapes — through which products like Coca-Cola travel, acquiring cultural and symbolic meanings in different contexts. Coca-Cola, as a global brand, exemplifies the mediatized imaginations of consumption, where taste, lifestyle, and identity converge. Reliance’s Campa revival taps into these scapes locally: it appropriates nostalgia, vernacular taste, and swadeshi sentiment to create an “Indianness” that feels authentic, even while reproducing globalized consumption logics.
Ritzer’s (1993) concept of the McDonaldization of society — efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control — is directly applicable. Reliance leverages its vertically integrated retail, logistics, and digital ecosystem to systematize beverage production, distribution, and consumption. Campa’s relaunch is highly predictable: standardized flavors, mass-produced bottles, and algorithmically optimized retail availability via JioMart and kirana partnerships ensure calculable sales and consumer compliance. The efficiency and control resemble McDonaldized systems, yet are infused with the cultural rhetoric of swadeshi and national heritage, illustrating how globalized corporate logics are domesticated into local ideological frameworks.
Continuity is evident: Ambani-Cola capitalism reproduces the extractive infrastructure of global soft drink industries — water overuse, plastic pollution, monoculture agriculture, and the marketing of sugar-laden beverages — extending Coca-Cola’s ecological and pharmakonic effects. Yet the semiotics shift: instead of the foreign glamour of Atlanta-based brands, Campa is framed as a “home-grown” alternative, leveraging affective economies of nostalgia, memory, and national pride.
The rupture, however, is discursive and political rather than ecological. Reliance’s appropriation of Coca-Cola capitalism is an oligarchic-nationalist project: it consolidates surplus within a domestic corporate empire, intertwining consumer markets with telecom, retail, energy, and media networks. The semiotic transformation masks continuity of structural violence while reinforcing local oligopoly. Ambani-Cola capitalism thus exemplifies Appadurai’s observation that global flows are never merely transplanted; they are reterritorialized, adapted, and interpreted through local imaginaries.
Moreover, this model illustrates Ritzer’s and Currid-Halkett’s (2009) insight into symbolic consumption: the cultural capital and affective meanings attached to products become commodified, translating nostalgia into revenue. Campa’s revival is simultaneously a business venture and a narrative of imagined economic sovereignty, offering consumers a sense of reclaiming agency in a globalized market. Yet, in material terms, the pharmakon logic persists: pleasure and consumption are inseparable from health risks, environmental degradation, and dependence on oligarchic infrastructures.
In sum, Reliance’s Campa Cola venture maps the paradox of Ambani-Cola capitalism: it sustains the structural and symbolic machinery of Coca-Cola capitalism while performing a nationalist, culturally resonant fantasy. Continuities in extractive practices, pharmakonic health consequences, and ecological externalities persist, while ruptures emerge primarily in the ideological framing of domestic legitimacy, nostalgia, and imagined sovereignty. This duality demonstrates how global consumer capitalism is neither erased nor fully localized: it is reterritorialized, domesticated, and spectacularized under oligarchic-nationalist auspices.
11. Discussion: Political Economy Implications
The consolidation of Ambani-Cola capitalism within India exemplifies a structural shift in the political economy: domestic conglomerates no longer merely imitate global models—they internalize, adapt, and extend them, generating hybrid forms of oligarchic-nationalist accumulation. Reliance’s revival of Campa Cola and its broader FMCG expansion illustrate how corporate empires strategically navigate nationalist discourse, commodity fetishism, and consumer affect to legitimize market dominance while retaining centralized control.
This maturation of Indian capitalism is inseparable from the broader crony-monopoly nexus linking Reliance, Adani, and Piramal. Together, these conglomerates operate as an intertwined industrial-political complex: Ambani’s retail and telecom empire, Adani’s energy and logistics infrastructure, and Piramal’s pharmaceutical and water enterprises collectively consolidate market power across sectors. The scale and vertical integration of this network allow it to internalize profits while externalizing costs—environmental degradation, public health hazards, and regulatory capture—effectively creating a “Hyperindustrial Armageddon” in which local communities bear the brunt of extractive practices.
Politically, this oligarchic consolidation is buttressed by state complicity. The BJP’s governance model, increasingly authoritarian and corporatist, shields these conglomerates through selective regulation, preferential contracts, and minimal enforcement of competition or environmental laws. This alignment transforms ostensibly democratic institutions into instruments of corporatist protection, reproducing what can be termed a fascist-capitalist synergy: the party legitimizes oligopoly through nationalist rhetoric, while industrial elites supply political and economic muscle. In this configuration, market and state are mutually reinforcing, blurring the boundary between governance and accumulation.
The Digwal case exemplifies the microphysics of this nexus. Piramal’s pharmaceutical operations, closely linked socially and financially to Ambani’s network, intertwine water governance, industrial extraction, and CSR-mediated legitimacy. Local interventions, such as RO water ATMs, function less as public goods than as symbolic buffers, concealing systemic harms while entrenching corporate authority over natural resources. In effect, the hyperindustrial complex leverages techno-managerial expertise, social messaging, and strategic philanthropy to naturalize inequality, normalize resource extraction, and reinforce oligarchic hegemony.
Furthermore, the consolidation of capital in such crony networks generates broader socio-economic distortions. By controlling critical infrastructure—retail chains, logistics corridors, digital platforms, and energy grids—these conglomerates dictate market access for competitors, shaping commodity flows, pricing regimes, and labor relations. Small-scale producers, independent farmers, and regional enterprises are subordinated, with their agency absorbed into oligopolistic circuits. Cultural narratives, such as “swadeshi revival” through Campa, mask these structural inequalities, allowing the hyperindustrial complex to project legitimacy even while reinforcing precarity and social stratification.
In sum, Ambani-Cola capitalism is a prism through which the entanglement of domestic oligopoly, globalized consumption, and authoritarian political protection can be observed. The political economy of India’s soft-drink and FMCG sectors cannot be disentangled from these networks: extraction, monopolization, and symbolic governance operate in tandem, producing a system that consolidates wealth and influence while externalizing ecological, social, and public health costs. The crony-monopoly complex—Adani, Ambani, Piramal—thus represents not just an economic configuration, but a political project in which state, market, and ideology converge to reproduce elite dominance under the guise of nationalism.
12. Recommendations and Policy Interventions
Addressing the intertwined ecological, health, and socio-political harms of soft-drink and FMCG conglomerates—particularly within the Ambani-Adani-Piramal nexus—requires transformative systemic interventions, not piecemeal fixes. Recommendations include:
12.1 Water Governance and Resource Accountability
- Mandate independent, community-led water audits for all beverage, pharmaceutical, and allied industrial operations, with real-time public disclosure.
- Institutionalize Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) frameworks for groundwater extraction, giving communities binding authority over industrial water use.
- Treat water as a commons, not a commodity: any extraction must be justified against local ecological thresholds and social needs, with enforceable sanctions for violations.
12.2 Circular Economy and Waste Justice
- Enforce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) not as voluntary compliance but as a legal obligation, ensuring all packaging is recyclable, reusable, or biodegradable.
- Penalize extractive practices that externalize waste and pollution onto communities, establishing legal frameworks for ecological debt.
- Promote decentralized, community-controlled recycling hubs that challenge corporate monopolization of the waste stream.
12.3 Anti-Oligopoly and Democratic Market Restructuring
- Break up vertical and horizontal concentration of market power in the FMCG and soft-drink sectors. Scrutinize conglomerates like Reliance, Adani, and Piramal for predatory practices, monopoly pricing, and cross-sector dominance.
- Foster cooperative, regional, and municipally-owned beverage and FMCG ventures as alternatives to oligopolistic dominance.
- Reassert public oversight over strategic supply chains, particularly for water, sugar, and energy, preventing private capture of essential resources.
12.4 Public Health and Nutritional Sovereignty
- Impose structural limits on sugar-sweetened beverages through taxation, marketing bans, and mandatory transparency on health risks.
- Reorient public health policy toward prevention, not treatment: shift the focus from pharma-driven remediation to systemic reduction of consumption-induced disease.
- Encourage public ownership or cooperative models for essential beverages, reducing reliance on profit-driven, health-extractive corporate actors.
12.5 Environmental Justice and Community Empowerment
- Legally empower local communities, panchayats, and municipal bodies to monitor, enforce, and litigate environmental harms, creating accountability beyond state–corporate collusion.
- Require corporations to internalize all social and ecological costs of production—including pollution, biodiversity loss, and health impacts—through enforceable restitution and reparations.
- Reimagine CSR not as symbolic PR but as community-controlled interventions directly tied to harm mitigation and ecological restoration.
12.6 Structural Transformation: Challenging the Pharmakon Logic
- Recognize and confront the pharmakon logic: the industrial cycle where pleasure, profit, and harm co-exist. Interventions should dismantle the systemic generation of disease and environmental degradation as a business model.
- Link health, environment, and industrial policy into an integrated framework that shifts the sector from extractive capitalism toward regenerative, community-centered regeneration.
- Envision a post-oligarchic food and beverage economy, where consumption, health, and ecological sustainability are governed by collective stewardship rather than corporate monopoly.
12.7 Towards Radical Systemic Change
- Move beyond incremental reforms: challenge the political-crony nexus that shields Ambani, Adani, and Piramal interests under the BJP’s neoliberal-fascist framework.
- Reclaim public space, resources, and regulatory authority from concentrated oligopolies; integrate democratic oversight into industrial governance.
- Foster a decolonial, post-extractive vision of consumption, where water, nutrition, and public health are rights, not commodities, and where corporate power serves society instead of exploiting it.
Taken together, these measures call for nothing less than a structural reorganization of the Indian soft-drink and FMCG landscape: one that confronts oligarchic domination, ecological destruction, and pharmakon-driven harm, and reorients production and consumption toward democratic, sustainable, and life-affirming futures.
13. Conclusion
The trajectory from Coca-Cola’s contested exit in Plachimada to the rise of Ambani-Cola under Reliance reveals more than a shift from foreign to domestic corporate dominance; it exposes the deep entrenchment of a pharmakon logic in India’s political economy. What is offered as relief—bottled water, CSR-driven Sarvajal kiosks, or nostalgic “Make in India” branding—is simultaneously poison, reproducing ecological destruction, public health crises, and social dependence. The Ambani-Cola project exemplifies what James C. Scott (1998) might term “high-modernist” industrial rationality, where technocratic visions of progress mask coercive and extractive social structures, and what Achille Mbembe (2003) would recognize as necropolitical governance, in which corporate control dictates which lives and ecologies flourish or perish.
Water scarcity, dietary harms, and the proliferation of monopolistic conglomerates are not simply technical or cultural problems but ideological terrains. Corporate-state formations—embodied in the Adani-Ambani-Piramal complex, shielded by a fascistized BJP—manufacture scarcity and normalize extraction, ensuring that the allure of consumption aligns with oligarchic accumulation. Ambani-Cola capitalism internalizes and amplifies the pharmakon logic: toxic industrial practices are simultaneously valorized as patriotic, innovative, and inevitable.
From a Castoriadian perspective (1991), these processes constitute a systemic imaginarization in which economic myths legitimize exploitation, while Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of capture highlights how flows of desire, capital, and infrastructure are abstracted and monopolized, even under the guise of domestic sovereignty. The problem is not merely regulation or corporate oversight but the very social-symbolic architecture that renders extraction, overconsumption, and inequality desirable.
True transformation requires dismantling the ideological, structural, and oligarchic circuits sustaining pharmakon capitalism: reclaiming commons, challenging the crony-monopoly nexus, and instituting ecologically regenerative and socially just forms of industrial governance. Without confronting the entanglement of desire, profit, and symbolic authority, the pharmakon will continue to operate as both poison and cure, embedding systemic harm into everyday life while marketing salvation.
Special Acknowledgement: DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡
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