AID Volunteer Saikat Chakraborty was featured in the Bengali daily Aaj Kaal in an article on the protests against Coke and Pepsi . See below for the English translation of the article.  

Not only in India, but also in US, the land of Coke-Pepsi's origin, protests against these "soft drinks" companies are becoming stronger. And in this regard, Indian students play a very prominent role. As a result of this agitation, earlier this year University of Michigan did not renew their contract with Coke. Now this is spreading widely. A volunteer organization "Association for India's Development, AID" is fighting for the boycott of these drinks. In many of their chapters like Morgantown (WV), College Park (MD), Ann Arbor (MI), Columbus (OH), Penn State and Pittsburgh (PA) – everywhere Indian students are highly vocal regarding their protest. A research scholar at West Virginia Univ., at Morgantown, Saikat said, "Our protest is against the atrocities of Coke and Pepsi in India. The way they have destroyed the livelihood of the farmers and also the environment by their bottling plants at places like Mehdiganj (UP), Plachimada (Kerala) and other places, simply cannot be tolerated anymore. They are destroying the farming process in these places by drawing out huge amounts of underground water illegally. Moreover the sludge from these plants is toxic and also leads to destruction of the fertility of the soil. It is being proved again and again that these drinks contain harmful chemicals and pesticides. Our protest is against all these."

Coming from Durgapur, Saikat is now pursuing research in Physics at the West Virginia University at Morgantown. He said, "Discussions about boycotting Coke is going on in about 40 US universities." In this regard, recently there have been very grave discussions about the harmful sides of these companies in an annual Conference of AID in Columbus, Ohio. After a very debated session it was decided that the AID volunteers are going to go back to their own individual Chapters and carry on these discussions in details. Saikat said, "Almost all the Chapters of AID are now seriously thinking about the protest against Coke-Pepsi. In Morgantown, we, the AID volunteers that are directly associated with this protest, neither use Coke in our own lives, nor use any of their products. Moreover we have requested others to stay away from these products." In the same context a resident of San Francisco, philanthropist Amit Shrivastava and his organization "India Resource Center" is protesting against Coke-Pepsi for many years in the US. Not only in the US, but Amit is also visiting many European countries for his propaganda "Boycott Coke-Pepsi. They are poisoning our land and depriving the soil of its fertiltiy."