An Insight

CSR CHANGING THE LENS An insight

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) took off in a big way after 2013, after India became the first nation to legislate the need to mandatorily undertake CSR activities with the new Companies Act. Big Indian groups were already having their philanthropic arms/trusts which with a deep focus on CSR activities. But the legislative changes pushed all the big corporations to focus more on CSR. Social organizations who were working with different strata of the society and had difficulties raising the funds, now benefitted. That's because the corporates now wanted to join hands with the right partners to ensure the funds reached the genuinely needy.

Large corporations have their own rules and regulations and rightly so – they are answerable to their stakeholders. Bigger organizations with a global presence have been able to adapt to the corporate requirements easily with their easy reach to the resources while smaller ones struggled. As a result, the genuine social organizations with feet firmly rooted to the ground and with deep connect to the needy society who could have utilized the funds more effectively have been losing out.

CSR is looked at as a Corporate branding exercise and rightly so. In doing so, the geographic focus areas tend to be governed by the branding aspect more than the actual social impact. A couple of such instances which I have seen from sidelines, come to my mind.

A social club in Goa implements a project for water harvesting in a Goan village which lies on the banks of a river. Just consider the possible impact if the funds were utilized for the same project in the water-starved regions of Maharashtra by tying up with any social organization there!!

Every year, Monsoons is the time for Vanamahotsava. For most organizations, this is a symbolic, but high visibility social project. Instead of planting trees on the roadside, can we take a small patch of land from the forest department and plan and maintain the trees there creating green patches with much more environmental impact?

I have no insights into the rationale on the projects and I am sure there will be good reasons for executing them, but I would like everyone from the corporate world to social organization to ponder over a few thoughts.

Do we really have to focus on geographical boundaries? Can we look at the nation as one and put the efforts wherever the need is? We, as a nation always rally and help the remotest region when it comes to calamities like floods or earthquakes. Can we use similar guidelines for CSR?

All organizations have annual performance reviews. We need to apply similar yardstick to our social projects – assess them periodically, realign, refocus, and take some hard decisions if required. This should also include assessing the partners in service and getting the right ones if needed.

It would also be worthwhile to look and help some of the social entrepreneurship projects. If they succeed the impact could be multifold.

All in all, while the CSR compulsion has brought in more funds to the social projects, I do feel we need to look at the activity holistically and with the ultimate aim to reach the neediest sections of the society.

MR. GIRISH BHARNE

Vice President Engineering & Centre Head - Goa Persistent Systems Ltd. Parivartan Executive Panel Member