Kodaikanal Won’t! Protest video garners support from celebrities

Unilever, the world-famous consumer goods company, is in trouble lately. Mercury contamination that its thermometer factory has spread in the air and soil of Kodaikanal, a hill station in southern India, has lead to a protest. The 27-year old Chennai-born rapper Sofia Ashraf made a rap video, stating how Kodaikanal won’t (sit silent anymore) and set it to the tune of Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda” and the video has gone viral (with over a million views) in just 4 days, and for all the right reasons. Sofia’s powerful lyrics describe how the company failed to clean up its ‘toxic shit’ in 14 years, despite all the Corporate Social Responsibility acts that it claims to undertake.

The video has been conceived and directed by Rathindran R Prasad, and has garnered appreciation and support from eminent personalities like Nandita Das, Vishal Dadlani, and yes, Nicki Minaj herself.

Here are the tweets and status updates supporting the movement:

Nandita Das

Could a rap music video about Kodaikanal's mercury disaster do what years of protests have failed to? http://t.co/vN1Z2MAIvd via @scroll_in

— Nandita Das (@nanditadas) August 2, 2015

Vishal Dadlani

Like hip hop?This is the newest, coolest rap track out there . Watch it, listen to the lyrics, and share extensively please.https://youtu.be/nSal-ms0vcI

Posted by Vishal Dadlani on Friday, 31 July 2015

Nicki Minaj

Wow https://t.co/dZCIT186iN

— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) August 1, 2015

The said factory in question was shut down in 2001 by Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board for crossing the limits of environmental pollution, but the contamination is yet to be cleared from KodaiKanal and the surrounding hills.

In a shocking discovery, we came to know that the company had dumped almost 15 tones of broken thermometers that contained mercury in the scrap yard of the said factory, and this figure doesn’t even take into account several tones of mercury that was discharged into the surrounding air and water while the company operated. The lethality of this can be estimated by the fact that a single gram of mercury is capable enough to contaminate 25-acre lake.

The people of Kodaikanal, along with the factory workers and their families are suffering from chronic health problems, with kids being born with genetic problems.

The video has gone viral and had 11,29,839 views by the time the story was written.

Watch the video here:



Courtesy: Jhatkaa