Clean up right, clean the site, treat us like, we were 'white'.
Repeated loud chants of these words, coupled with a moving background score, will push you to join the crowd and raise hands in protest. Three years after rap singer Sofia Ashraf's viral protest music video 'Kodaikanal Won't' put the spotlight on mercury contamination at the Kodaikanal Unilever plant, she is back with a sequel—'Kodaikanal Still Won't'. And this time, she is accompanied by popular Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna and indie rock musician Amrit Rao to generate a peppy number—an exquisite confluence of carnatic, rap and gaana kuthu.
'Kodaikanal Still Won't' is a shout-out against the company's 'environmental racism'—an idea that runs throughout the video with T.M. Krishna singing in 'Tamil English', telling them to stick to international clean-up standards.
It aims to bring attention to a petition filed by Chennai-based activists who have been fighting against the mercury contamination for more than a decade. “Unilever left the hills long before. The factory is closed. But they haven’t given proper compensation to the victims or clean up the site. Now, after the protests, they say they will clean up to a standard of 20mg per kilogram of soil. This video aims to tell Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman that the company has to follow the international clean-up standards,” said environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman.
The activists allege that the company’s proposed clean-up will leave behind 20 times more mercury in Kodaikanal’s soil than is considered safe for residential areas in the United Kingdom, and 66 times more than levels considered safe in the Netherlands. “Such a shoddy clean-up will never be permitted in Europe,” said Jayaraman in a press release.
And according to him this substandard procedure amounts to environmental racism, and it harms marginalised communities.
Shot in the mystic Kodaikanal hills, the video, directed by Rathindran R. Prasad, features families of people affected by the Unilever plant. Bharatanatyam dancers match their steps to the beats in the hills, to add a charm, while making a powerful statement.
The 2015 music video had focussed on the mercury contamination caused by Unilever’s now defunct thermometre manufacturing plant in the hills of Kodaikanal. In 2016, the company came down for settlement with over 600 workers who were exposed to the poisonous vapours. “But the mercury waste is still lying there and the site has still not been cleaned up. This is toxic, spoiling the soil and causing more danger to the environment and the generations there,” said Nityanand.
Sofia Ashraf, T.M. Krishna and Rathindran plan to travel to the Netherlands and London later this year to collaborate with musicians abroad to bring attention to Unilever’s actions.