Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Donor’s Perpective

Beneficiary Perpective

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The purpose of CSR is to give back to the community, take part in philanthropic causes and create positive social value.

In India, CSR activities by companies are guided by section 135 of companies act.

·       annual turnover of 1,000 crore INR and more, or a net worth of 500 crore INR and more, or a net profit of five crore INR and more.

·       spend of 2% of average PBT during the three immediately preceding financial years

·       Areas of activities

a.   Eradicating hunger, poverty and malnutrition, and making available safe drinking water. 

b.   Promoting education, including special education and employment   enhancing vocation skills.

c.    Promoting gender equality, empowering women, setting up homes and hostels for women and orphans.

d.   Ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agroforestry, conservation of natural resources and maintaining quality of soil, air and water.

e.   Protection of national heritage, art and culture including restoration of buildings and sites of historical importance and works of art, setting up public libraries; promotion and development of traditional art and handicrafts.

f.    Measures for the benefit of armed forces veterans, war widows and their dependents.

g.   Training to promote rural sports, nationally recognised sports, Paralympic sports and Olympic sports

h.   Contribution to the prime minister’s national relief fund or any other fund set up by the central govt.

i.   

1.  Contribution to incubators or research and development projects in the field of science, technology, engineering and medicine. 

2.  Contributions to public funded Universities and others.

j.    Rural development projects.

k.   Slum area development.

l. Disaster management, including relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction activities.

How companies can benefit from CSR work?

A medium and large size project will need hundreds of acres of land. However, land acquisition has been proved to be difficult, even in areas where land is less productive. Even if Govt acquires the land (seeing the political fall-out of forcible acquisition from reluctant owners/farmers) govts are, these days, reluctant to act) and hand over to the project proponent, they face a lot of resistance/unrest from locals during project implementation/commercial operation, resulting in completion delays and consequences there-off. These problems can be managed by ensuring effective CSR intervention.

Rural areas in India lack basic amenities/facilities, like quality health care, education etc. Livelihood opportunities are minimum. Agriculture and animal husbandry are major sources of income.  Rural women are mostly a disenfranchised lot with low access to education, early marriage, early motherhood. As such, three major areas of CSR activities, in DIZ (Directly impacted Zone) areas may be,

1.   Providing basic health-care facilities

2.   Implementing livelihood generation programmes

3.   Women empowerment

The goodwill that effective implementation of these projects will generate among the rural folks will go a long way to ensure peaceful, unhindered implementation of the project.

A running factory can receive whole hearted support and minimum interruptions from local community, thereby reducing revenue loss etc, if these projects are implemented well.

               Author: Aloke Bhattacharjee

Reference : Blog of Ex NTPC Employees