Resisting Big Pharma
- Tom Vermolen
- Jun 29
- 4 min read
Digwal’s Defiance: Resisting Big Pharma
By Akhar Bandyopadhyay
What Has Happened in Digwal So Far
In Digwal, a village of 6,000 in Telangana, India, Piramal Pharma Ltd. (PPL) produces Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) for global markets. It is alleged to be poisoning the land, water, and air. Telangana drives a third of India’s pharma exports, but Digwal bears the cost: contaminated groundwater, ruined lands, crops, and rising cardiac and dermatological diseases. PPL’s plant, rooted in the early 2000s as Nicholas Piramal India Ltd. (NPIL), evolved through possible shell (company) games, (de-)mergers and rebrands (most notably as Piramal Enterprises Ltd., or PEL), becoming PPL by 2022. What’s up with such constant swapping identities? It is perhaps to evade legal accountability and absolve oneself of legal identification!
Notably, Mr. Ajay Piramal, the owner of the Piramal Conglomerate in all its erstwhile and renewed forms, is a billionaire with a reported/estimated net worth of US$3.2 billion (as of April 2025).
Perhaps, Piramal was not, and is not the only agent in this suicidal game of alleged environmental damage, as shall soon become clear.
The nearby Patancheru industrial area, 30 miles east of Digwal, has long spewed toxic effluents, compounding the crisis. Global Drugs Ltd., another alleged polluter across National Highway 9 since the 1990s, faced lawsuits but ignored them. In 1998, a state court confirmed that the water was unfit for drinking or irrigation. A 1999 judicial order labelled Global Drugs “highly polluting,” demanding compensation, yet little changed. Villagers, led by activist Shailaja, rallied and applied legal pressure, pushing cases to the High Court. When NPIL acquired the pharma plant in 2003, it promised state-of-the-art effluent treatment, citing FDA approval and exports to the USA, UK, and Asia Pacific. Despite consistent reports from locals about ongoing harm, and their frequent avoidance of using well water, companies have dismissed these concerns, often reducing them to mere 'paranoia.'
In 2016, PEL’s expansion plans reignited fury. Activist K. Lakshma Reddy’s 2018 petition spurred a National Green Tribunal (NGT) investigation. In November 2019, a joint committee imposed an Rs 8.34 crore environmental compensation on PPL for flouting norms, following the “Polluter Pays” principle, along with other companies in the region such as Frigerio Conserva Allana and Shree Siddhi Vinayaka Agre Extractions Ltd. The Piramal Administration sought a blanket stay, but the NGT allowed only a partial stay in March 2021, ordering Rs 3.2 crore paid by July 2021. Despite this, PPL expanded its API capabilities in June 2022, reportedly with political backing, leaving Digwal’s future precarious.
Green Lies: Capitalism’s Shallow Malingering
PPL’s actions in Digwal expose greenwashing’s blatant hypocrisy, whereby corporations feign eco-friendliness while ravaging nature without turning a hair. PPL pollutes, then profits from “Water ATMs” using harmful Reverse OsmosisIts “Piramal Arogya Seva Kendra” (A Medical Facility Centre) in Digwal is just a bandage on a wound it keeps slashing. This is green capitalism: commodifying nature through “carbon credits” and “biodiversity offsets” to sustain profits. Mainstream economics, like the Stern Review, frames climate change as a “market failure” ripe for investment, while models like DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy) model deem 3.5°C warming “optimal” for GDP, ignoring devastated ecosystems and suffering communities.
Post-COVID, “green” funds surged, but so did eco-fascism, scapegoating the vulnerable while rich nations (e.g., the USA, 4% of the population, 25% of emissions) fuel the crisis. Digwal’s plight proves capitalism caused this mess and can’t fix it. The Piramal Group’s “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR: an oxymoron?!) initiatives, like Piramal Sarvajal (Water for All Initiative), mask a Summersian paradox: create crises, then profit from “solutions.” We’re fighting not just pollution but also a system that views nature as a cash cow. It is time that we reject these lies, demanding justice over market-driven sticking plasters. It’s time to prioritize nature and/or people over “GDP”, “growth”, “development” etc.
Significantly, Piramal Realty, the real estate arm of the Piramal Conglomerate, is currently engaged in erecting skyscrapers across low-lying, coastal, and high climate-risk zones in various parts of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra. It is a city facing unprecedented inundation threats. Ecological fallout remains either unaddressed or only superficially acknowledged through what may be termed lip service, primarily via the Piramal Foundation’s philanthropic initiatives.
What You CAN DO, How You CAN ENGAGE:
Support Digwal’s Fight: Amplify the voices of Digwal residents and others battling corporate giants—pharma, oil, or coal—through digital campaigns and grassroots mobilization. Accept the help of local climate activist groups, if needed. Hold extractivists accountable at every step for destroying lives and livelihoods. This becomes even more necessary given that the protestors and legal professionals fighting for curing Digwal’s disease have been somewhat constrained, given the political climate. Let us renew and envision their fight in the broader spectrum of climate justice following the slogan: BOYCOTT THE BILLIONAIRES.
As a corollary to (1), strengthen legal accountability for ecocidal projects by collaborating with environmental lawyers, or “barristers of the earth,” to enforce robust, non-negotiable sanctions within a system rife with pervasive corruption. Advocate for legal frameworks that uphold the fundamental right to livelihood, recognizing its deep connections to a healthy natural world. Ensure these laws protect ecosystems as essential foundations of human survival, emphasizing the threat from irreversible environmental harm.
Rethink Medicalization: Question the over-reliance on pharmaceuticals. Do we need endless drugs, or a shift to sustainable lifestyles? Explore permaculture and holistic community health for accessible, ecologically conducive alternatives. This can lessen the overt reliance or parasitic dependency on big pharma, thereby diminishing their omnipresent involvement in and out of human bodies and/or the body of nature. This shall be a silent revolution that begins from one’s home.
Let’s strike, non-violently but militantly, for a future where nature and people become the first priority, not capital’s whims.
References
Buller, A. (2022). The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Manchester
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