SPO INDIA MAY 2017

Vol. II

| Issue 07

| May 2017

| Rs. 50

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www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 1

2 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

COVER STORY | 26 Editor-in-Chief: Deepak Kumar Sahu Executive Editor: Pravin Prashant Assistant Editor: Samrita Baruah Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Vice President: Prasanna Rout Advisor: Yogesh Joshi General Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110 030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@spoindia.org Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala Kar D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru - 560066, Tel: 080-49530399 Mobile: 08904205750/9916134482 Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai - 410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479 Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: Mr.Parthiban K A2, R.C.Residency, Cholambedu Road, Thiruvenkada nagar, Ambathur, Chennai - 600 053 Mobile: 09840055626 Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar B 383 HAL Colony, Balanagar Hyderabad, Telengana - 500 042 Tel: 040-32989844, Mobile: 08100298033 Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Kiran Kumar 67 Sarada Park, Garia, Kolkata - 700 084 Mobile: 09903088480 Printed by Deepak Kumar Sahu and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of Deepak Kumar Sahu and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110 020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110 030 Editor - Deepak Kumar Sahu

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SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017 The summit was a grand success thanks to pan-India presence of speakers and awardees. Emerging NGOs were felicitated for the first time in the history of CSR, even CPSEs were awarded on the basis of CSR investment in FY2015-16 interview 17

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"We are looking at our involvement in healthcare and education..."

“NBCC is planning to purchase a few construction companies...”

COLUMN 18 CSR is Integral to HGS Growth

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06-16 NEWS EVENT REPORT

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CSR Fair 2017 The first CSR Fair focused on showcasing CSR activities and sharing best practices with all stakeholders

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ICT4D Focus was on meeting UN SDGs through ICT innovations

Smita Gaikwad Senior VP – Corporate Comm. and CSR, Hinduja Global Solutions

19 Shift From Demonetization to DigiMonetization Shrikant Sinha CEO, NASSCOM Foundation

EDIT

www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 3

Data economy is the Next economy ….. working towards Inclusive Growth

The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. Altogether, technology companies today own almost all the data which has been created or is being created in the world on a day-to-day basis. While it obviously helps them provide better products and services to all of us as users, but at the same time it has contributed to huge inequality in terms of large market entry barrier which it creates for new business entrants and also for existing small and medium enterprises which lose out on being unable to leverage the power of data.

The value of data is increasing day by day. Facebook and Google initially used the data they collected from users for better advertising. Data can now be turned into any number of Artificial Intelligence (AI), some of which will generate new sources of revenue. To complement the growth of technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become a buzzword in business and household name, and has caught on in everyday use like home appliances and security systems which can also be controlled through mobile applications. Many utility companies can now measure meters remotely rather than dispatching technicians to manually collect the data. Smart refrigerators, smart watches and smart / connected cars, the IoT has made all this possible. It has offered consumers a whole host of innovative solutions to make their living easy and comfortable. The choices we make today are going to influence the generations to come.

Secondly, Information Technology (IT) is one of the critical sectors that rides on and resides in cyberspace. It has emerged as one of the most significant growth catalysts for the Indian economy. The concern is how to keep in control the bloodless war in the country, that is cyber war. The need of the hour is how to provide the right kind of focus for creating a secure computing environment and adequate trust and confidence in electronic transactions, software, services, devices and networks, which has become one of the compelling priorities for the country. Such a focus will enable creation of a suitable cybersecurity ecosystem in the country. It is time for the corporates, government and PSUs to come forward and think on how to train as much as possible young generations in digital and cyber literacy so as to maintain sustainable leadership in the industry. One way is by contributing a part of profits beyond business for the larger good of society.

Lastly, corporations around the world are struggling with a new role of sustainability refers to an organization’s activities, which is to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the next generations to meet their own needs.

The recently held CSR Summit and Leadership Awards, being organised by SPO INDIA in New Delhi is the right showcase of the companies working towards inclusive growth, where NGOs have showcased on the good work done in the society and experts spoke about how to work towards inclusive growth.

Deepak Kumar Sahu President, SPOI | VARINDIA’s Development Initiative For CSR www.spoindia.org 4 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

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NEWS/NGO

President felicitates winners of CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Award The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee felicitated winners of CII foundation Woman Exemplar Award in New Delhi.

Jayamma Bandari from Telangana won the award for education & literacy, Monika Majumdar from West Bengal won the award for health whereas Kamal Kumbhar from Maharashtra won the award for micro enterprise.

The institution of the CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Award in 2005 promotes women’s empowerment at the community level by discovering and recognizing those who have, against all odds, excelled and contributed significantly to the development process in India.

Speaking on the occasion, the President Pranab Mukherjee congratulated all the awardees for receiving Woman Exemplar Awards.

The awards will be a great encouragement for the countless number of women who are contributing in different ways to strengthening our nation and its economy.

With the CSR legislation, the scale and scope of social programmes that can be undertaken by Industry has been further enhanced.

As per CII, about 1,270 Indian companies have spent more than Rs. 8,000 crores on CSR activities over the last year which is 27 per cent higher compared to the previous year. The range of CSR programs is extensive and includes education, healthcare, and rural development, amongst others. Special outreach is made for gender empowerment, differently abled citizens, and children’s issues.

Loomba Foundation distributes 424 sewing machines

The Loomba Foundation, a United Nations-accredited global NGO that focuses exclusively on the cause of widow empowerment has distributed 424 sewing machines to widows across 30 different training centers in Varanasi.

The Loomba Foundation’s commitment is to empower 5,000 widows of Varanasi. Dr Awadhesh Singh, MLA, Pindra (Varanasi) was the chief guest at an event organized by The Loomba Foundation. The event was attended by around 250 widows and other guests.

Dr Awadhesh Singh said, “I am touched by the strong sense of purpose that is evident in this initiative undertaken by The Loomba Foundation to ensure that poor widows can lead a life of dignity and respect.”

Speaking at the event, Atul Palta, Director – Skills Training and Empowerment, The Loomba Foundation said, “There are estimated 46 million widows in India. Most of them live in rural areas. They are uneducated and cannot find a job. They are dependable on their families and communities, who often abuse them physically, psychologically and sexually."

Mr Palta feels that the Government of India should help widows as a matter of priority as it an issue that needs to be urgently addressed. In the light of recent communication from the Supreme Court to the Government regarding improving the state of widows in India – The Loomba Foundation feels strongly that the government should consider the recommendations given by our Founder and Chairman, Lord Raj Loomba CBE, which are: Set up a National Commission for Widows; Appoint a person in the Panchayats who is responsible for the well being of widows in towns and villages; and give a minority status to widows.

CRY launches Data Analytics Program funded by Oracle Child Rights and You (CRY), one of India’s leading Indian Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), announced the launch of a new data analytics program funded by Oracle.

The data analytics program will measure the progress, social impact and outcome of CRY’s intervention in changing in the lives of thousands of underprivileged children in India.

Thanks to the $100,000 grant from Oracle, CRY will have extended hardware and technical support from Oracle to ensure its effective implementation across 50 projects in India.

“We are grateful to Oracle for having helped us merge technology and data analytics with our work to ensure sustainable outputs of our on ground development programs,” said Suma Ravi, Regional Director - South, CRY. “With this support, we will be able to implement a result based monitoring system, which will help us to quantitatively measure the outcome of our efforts and also improve the quality of our programs based on the inputs,” added Suma.

The new data analytics program will use Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) software to track how every child is being impacted, ensure course correction and a long lasting change in the lives of India’s underprivileged children.

6 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/NGO

Parag Agarwal of Janajal honoured with Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award Parag Agarwal of JanaJal was honoured with the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award in the category of Social Enterprises.

Parag is the Founder and CMD of JanaJal, which is flagship initiative of New Delhi based Supremus Group that is committed towards changing the perception and thought process on drinking water and ensure better living for every Indian.

Parag has extensive experience in water management and water treatment technologies.

In 2008, he identified water as the next global commodity and the water sector as an area that would yield a huge global infrastructure and services opportunity.

JanaJal has a pan India presence and has recently launched 39 water ATMs with IRCTC and Indian Railways at various stations in the Mumbai region such as Kalyan, Chembur, LokmanyaTilak Terminus, Mankhurd, Wadala, Dockyard Road uptoKhopoli, Lonavalaand Igatpuri.

“The aim is not only to make safe drinking water available and accessible at an affordable cost but also to increase awareness amongst people about conservation and preservation of water by harnessing suitable technologies and implementing them. It feels good to be appreciated and noticed by such an eminent jury and platform such as Enterprise Asia and I thank them for presenting me this award,” said Parag Agarwal.

Enterprise Asia is a non-governmental organisation in pursuit of creating an Asia that is rich in entrepreneurship as an engine towards sustainable and progressive economic and social development within a world of economic equality. Enterprise Asia works with governments, NGOs and other organisations to promote competitiveness and entrepreneurial development, in uplifting the economic status of people across Asia and in ensuring a legacy of hope, innovation and courage for future generations.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra conferred Community Changemaker Award The Shiv Nadar Foundation has announced that Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Executive Director & CEO of $7 billion enterprise HCL Corporation and Trustee, Shiv Nadar Foundation has been felicitated with the “Lewis Institute 2017 Community Changemaker” award.

The award recognises and celebrates an individual who has set something in motion in order to create a positive change and employs the Babson methodology of Entrepreneurial Thought & Action.

“Roshni has used the power of Entrepreneurial Thought & Action, Babson’s renowned methodology, to create economic and social value in business and in the world of philanthropy. Her influence has and will continue to set in motion a tremendous ripple effect that will change the trajectory of underprivileged young people,” said Cheryl Kiser, Executive Director, Lewis Institute.

The Lewis Institute 2017 Community Changemaker Award recognizes individuals who are motivated to challenge the status quo rather than live quietly within the confines of a broken system.

Accepting the award RoshniNadar Malhotra said, “The work we do at the Shiv Nadar Foundation is driven by our conviction to drive meaningful transformation by harnessing the power of inclusive education. However, when it is recognized by a reputed institution like Babson, it is a validation that we are working in the right direction.”

Roshni received the award for her focus on leveraging the power of entrepreneurship as a positive force for social change. As a Trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, she drives the Foundation’s strategy and its long-term roadmap. Roshni is also the Chairman and the driving force behind VidyaGyan, a leadership academy for the meritorious, underprivileged, rural students of Uttar Pradesh.

The Academy aims to nurture future leaders from rural India who can act as catalysts of change for their communities, villages and the nation. www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 7

NEWS/NGO

NGOs given time upto June 14 to file annual returns

The government has given one final opportunity to all NGOs which have applied for renewal of their registration under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA) but not uploaded their annual returns from FY2010-11 to FY2014-15.

All such NGOs can upload their missing Annual Returns along with the requisite documents within a period of 30 days, starting from May 15, 2017 to June 14, 2017. Further no compounding fee will be imposed on them for late filing of annual returns during this period.

This exemption is one time measure and available to those associations and NGOs who upload their missing annual returns from FY2010-11 to FY2014-15 within this period. The renewal of registration under FCRA cannot be granted unless the annual returns are uploaded by the organization.

Akshaya Patra launches Feed the Future Now Movement The Akshaya Patra Foundation (TAPF) along with partners under the Feed The Future Now have come together to pledge their support in better future of our children.

The organization has signed up with GlaxoSmithkline, PepsiCo, Nestle, Reliance Fresh, Viacom18, Facebook, Big FM, PVR Cinemas and The Lalit Group of Hotels under the banner of #FeedTheFutureNow. Feed The Future Now is a movement for social change that aims to provide 5 billion meals by 2020. The movement envisions to garner support from the public sector, private sector, media and the civil society at large to drive a common mission for the government, corporates, development sector partners and individuals.

India has one of the world’s highest demographics of children suffering from malnutrition. According to World Bank estimates around 60 million children in India are underweight and around 58.4 per cent are anaemic. Malnutrition is an obstacle to a child’s health, education and survival. The quality of food a child consumes may be deficient in micronutrients (known as ‘hidden hunger’) such as the vitamins and minerals and this could have an adverse impact on their overall growth and development.

The participants of the ‘Feed The Future Now’ movement, champions from the development and corporate world, urge the people of india – from the government to each one of you – to come together in providing 5 billion meals to underserved children by 2020. We pledge our support in bringing down malnourishment to build a better future for india.

TAPF works with the objective of providing nutritious mid-day meals, so that no child in India is deprived of quality education due to malnutrition.

Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank contributes Rs 29.85 Lakh Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank, which is sponsored by the Punjab National Bank has contributed Rs 29.85 lakh to Army Battle Casualties Welfare Fund.

The Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Punjab National Bank Usha Ananthasubramanian presented a cheque of Rs. 29.85 lakh to Defence Minister ArunJaitley as donation towards the Army Battle Casualties Welfare Fund.

Financial assistance will be provided to the families of the Army Battle Casualties out of this fund. The amount was contributed by the employees of the Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank.

While accepting the cheque, ArunJaitley appreciated the concern shown by the employees of the Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank towards the families of the defence personnel who have sacrificed their lives for the country and expressed his confidence that such efforts will be continued by them towards this noble cause.

8 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/GOVT.

IICA and NSDC to forge collaboration on skills and CSR Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) have forged a collaboration on skills and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Manish Kumar, managing director & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) mentioned the “areas of synergy” and “common grounds” that both the organisations can identify for working together.

He further said that the two organisations can collaborate in areas including but not limited to MSME, corporate governance, CSR, business innovation, e-Governance and corporate communications. He also gave a detailed account of NSDC’s mandate as well as delivery mechanisms.

The present visit was aimed at exploring synergy and partnership between the two institutions, which in turn, would lead to effective collaborative work.

Speaking on the occasion, Sunil Arora, DG & CEO, IICA reiterated the possibility of both the organisations working together covering several domains.

Highlighting the need for a close coordination and regular interaction, Arora suggested that teams from both organisations should work towards closing a MoU within a specified period of time.

He further articulated that areas of CSR, skill, entrepreneurship, innovation, MSMEs provided ample opportunity to both the organizations to bring together mutual synergies and contribute to policy priorities of the government.

Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) is an autonomous organisation working under the aegis of the ministry of corporate affairs. Set up as the premier organisation that aims at providing astute and credible intellectual leadership in corporate regulation, governance and running sustainable businesses, IICA is a capacity development and service delivery institute.

The National Skill Development Corporation, (NSDC) is a unique Public Private Partnership in India, working under the ministry of skill development & entrepreneurship. It aims to promote skill development by catalysing creation of large, quality, for-profit vocational institutions. NSDC provides funding to build scalable, for-profit vocational training initiatives. Its mandate is also to enable support systems such as quality assurance, information systems and train the trainer academies either directly or through partnerships.

Thaawarchand Gehlot inaugurates ‘15th National Meeting of State Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities’ Thaawarchand Gehlot, Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment inaugurated the “15th National Meeting of the State Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities (PwD)” to review Implementation of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of rights and Full Participation) Act-1995.

The two days meeting has been organized by the Office of the Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities under Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

Addressing on the occasion, Thaawarchand Gehlot said "During past three years, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has become very active and vibrant. It has organized more 5,200 ADIP camps for distribution of assistive devices to Divyangjans and four world records have been created. After the passing of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Bill, the categories of Divyangjans have increased from 7 to 21 and now its implementation should be properly taken care of by all concerned."

He opined that the government wants to strengthen the commissioner system in all the states and full time commissioners will serve their purpose in a better way and also also stressed on the people’s participation in this effort.

During the two days meeting, the focus was on education, employment/self-employment, accessible environment and social security etc for Persons with disabilities in the states and union territories was reviewed and strategy for more effective implementation of the Act is being formulated. www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 9

NEWS/GOVT.

2.20 crore LPG connections given under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Over 2.20 Crore connections have been given in the first year of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) scheme to BPL families says Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural gas, Dharmendra Pradhan.

Pradhan said that the PMUY has surpassed the targets for FY2016-17 in terms of installing new connections. Over 2.20 Crore connections have been given in the first year of PMUY scheme to BPL families whereas the target was 1.5 Crore connections for the financial year.

PMUY was launched on 1st May, 2016 at Ballia, Uttar Pradesh by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the financial year 2016-17, Oil Marketing Companies have given 3.25 Crore new connections across the country. This is the highest ever LPG connections released in any given year taking the total number of active LPG consumer base to over 20 Crore.

Pradhan said that the LPG demand in the country has registered a growth rate of more than 10 per cent. More than 4,600 new distributors have been added in the last 3 years which have come up primarily in rural areas.

Speaking on the key features of implementation of PMUY, Pradhan said that 85% of the new consumers have come back for a refill. About 38% of the beneficiaries in PMUY are from SC/ST category.

"PMUY has been implemented in a participatory mode involving beneficiaries, elected representatives, distinguished personalities, local administration etc. A differential communication strategy to popularize the scheme as well as educating beneficiaries on safety norms through regional languages was carried out. There is a 360-degree engagement and also monitoring of the implementation of the scheme," added Pradhan.

Pradhan said PMUY has become a social movement with the beneficiaries coming forward in large number to apply and get the cylinders installed.

CSR getting mainstreamed through the Companies Act 2013: Arjun Ram Meghwal Speaking on the valedictory ceremony of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) Certified Professional in CSR course organised at the campus of IICA, Manesar, the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arjun Ram Meghwal said that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is getting mainstreamed through the Companies Act 2013.

Speaking on the occasion, Arjun Ram Meghwal said that with corruption free governance, endorsement and overwhelming support of all the citizens and corporates, and demographic dividend, India will be leading group of nations in the coming century.

He also inaugurated a portal for effective communication amongst participants of the course and other stakeholders.

He also said that the provisions of this landmark legislation has for the first time, brought the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility from back rooms of corporates to their board rooms.

During his speech, the Minister of State also complimented the 130 IICA certified professionals of Batch II on their course completion and exhorted the young students to contribute actively in their dedicated work of nation building through the skills and expertise developed through this course.

Addressing the gathering, Pritam Singh, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs highlighted that corporate governance is fast evolving in India. The core idea behind setting up IICA to provide training and policy support to corporate and Government is now coming to fruition.

In his address, DG & CEO, IICA, Shri Sunil Arora said, “IICA by providing high quality training and research support in the multi-disciplinary area of corporate affairs is seeking to widen, broaden and deepen its engagement with CSR�.

10 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/GOVT.

President presents Dr Ambedkar National Award for Social Understanding and Upliftment of Weaker Sections

Dr. Ambedkar National Award for Social Understanding and Upliftment of Weaker Sections was presented to Professor S.K. Thorat, Samta Sainik Dal, Babu Lal Nirmal and Amar Sewa Sangam for 2011, 2012 and and 2014 respectively.

The award for the year 2011 was presented to Professor S.K. Thorat for his contributions towards the upliftment of the downtrodden. The award for the year 2012 was presented to Samta Sainik Dal for its extraordinary services.

The award for the year 2014 was jointly presented to Babu Lal Nirmal of Rajasthan for his extraordinary contributions in upholding the rights of poor persons in rural and urban areas of Baran District and to Amar Sewa Sangam of Tamil Nadu for its extraordinary services being extended for the welfare of the marginalized population of the society including the physically and mentally challenged persons.

The President of India Pranab Mukharjee presented the “Dr. Ambedkar National Award for Social Understanding and up-liftment of Weaker Sections for the year 2011, 2012 and 2014” at a function in Delhi. The function was organized by The Ambedkar Foundation under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

The award consists of a citation and Rs. 10 lakh as cash prize.

Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot presided over the function. Ministers of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Vijay Sampla, Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Latha Krishna Rao and many other dignitaries were present.

The award was instituted by the Government of India in the year 1992 and is given for outstanding contribution to the promotion of social understanding and for the upliftment of the weaker sections in India. One Award each year is presented to individuals or organizations and is presented jointly or shared by more than one recipient or organization as may be considered by the Jury to be equally deserving of recognition in the year.

Addressing on the occasion President Pranab Mukherjee said, "Social justice is the most important factor in the development of a developing country. The government alone can not do such things and the involvement of people and organizations is necessary."

Born on 9th July, 1959 in Ataru Rajasthan, Shri Babu Lal Nirmal, is considered to be the voice of the oppressed and neglected people of the society in Rajasthan. He is a known face in Baran district, who has established a strong network for assisting the needy population in making them aware of their rights.

Amitabh Bachchan led Toilet Usage Campaign set for national launch

Iconic actor, Amitabh Bachchan will do a national launch Toilet Usage Campaign called Darwaza Band in Mumbai on May 30.

For promotion of toilet usage across the country’s villages, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has come out with an aggressive new campaign called Darwaza Band starting on May 30, 2017.

Iconic actor, Amitabh Bachchan, who leads the campaign, is proposed to be joined by Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Narendra Singh Tomar; Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis; Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation; Parameswaran Iyer, and other dignitaries at the formal launch event in Mumbai tomorrow.

Champion functionaries from the state will also be awarded on the occasion.

The campaign has been supported by the World Bank and is being rolled out countrywide immediately after the launch. It is designed to encourage behaviour change in men who have toilets but are not using them. The campaign also features actor, Ms Anushka Sharma, who will be seen encouraging women to stand up for this issue in their villages and assume a leadership role.

Amitabh Bachchan has been a major supporter and ambassador for the Swachh Bharat Mission and is already associated with its ongoing campaigns. Behaviour change has been the focus of Swachh Bharat Mission, which is being pursued through a countrywide comprehensive IEC (Information-Education-Communication) programme. Communication campaigns have been taken up both, at the central and state levels, for promoting sustained use of toilets and for sustaining the open defecation free status achieved. www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 11

NEWS/CORPORATE

Vodafone India and SaveLIFE Foundation develops Road Safe app Vodafone India and SaveLIFE Foundation has developed Road Safe app to improve road safety in India.

The Road Safe app has been created with the objective of keeping drivers away from distractions while driving and also provides useful tips on safe driving.

A key feature in the app is promoting distraction free driving which will automatically disable calls/SMS/push notifications for the driver when vehicle speed is above 10 km/hour. The Road Safe app also has road safety tips and information on traffic fines and offences.

The study reveals 94 per cent of people acknowledge using mobile phones during driving as being dangerous but 47 per cent of them admit to receiving calls while driving. The study also reveals that 34 per cent of all respondents tend to apply sudden brakes when talking on the phone while driving, while 20 per cent of respondents admit to having had near-miss situations or having experienced road crash due to using mobile phones while driving.

96 per cent of people spoken to, tend to feel unsafe as passengers if the driver was using mobile phone while driving.

Exhorting Indians to follow model road safety norms and set an example to the rest of the world, P. Balaji, Director - Regulatory, External Affairs, Regulatory & CSR, Vodafone India said, “From a CSR and sustainability perspective too, Vodafone has taken the lead in engaging with our stakeholders on our best practices health safety and well being, mainly in the domain of road safety. We hope the findings of this first of its kind report will draw focus to the perils of ignoring road safety norms and help save lives by getting citizens to use the convenient mobile app."

Saji Cherian, director, Operations, SaveLIFE Foundation said, “This study is path breaking as it categorically confirms for the first time that use of mobile phones while driving is rampant in India. The focus is also on solving the problem by launching Road Safe mobile application that will help drivers remain distraction-free while driving.”

ICICI Group to transform 500 villages into Digital Villages ICICI Group is planning to transform 500 villages in to digital villages by December, 2017.

ICICI Group today dedicated 100 ‘ICICI Digital Villages’ to the nation, marking the bank’s efforts to partner the nation’s progress by empowering rural India.

ArunJaitley, Union Minister of Finance, Defence & Corporate Affairs inaugurated the event, ‘ICICI Rural Summit – ‘SashaktGaon, Samriddh Bharat’.

The inauguration of the digital villages follows the bank’s commitment given in November 2016 to transform 100 villages into ‘ICICI Digital Villages’ in as many days. The programme involves end to end digitisation of transactions and other commercial activities, providing vocational training to villagers, extending credit facility and helping the villagers to access markets and earn a sustainable livelihood.

Speaking at the event, Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director & CEO, ICICI Bank said: “In line with our vision of ‘SashaktGaon, Samridhh Bharat’, we have transformed 100 villages across the country in 100 days. We have created a less cash ecosystem at these villages, provided vocational training to over 11,300 villagers, including more than 7,500 women and offered them credit linkages.

We have done all of these in the past 100 days.

"We intend to expand the number of such villages by another 500 by December 2017. In the process, we will train an additional 50,000 individuals and impact 12.5 lakh lives,” added Kochhar.

These villages are spread across the length and breadth of the country, the villagers here can use digital channels for banking and payments transactions. They can also open bank accounts using Aadhar-based e-KYC (electronic Know Your Customer), make cashless payments at retail stores using Point-of-Sale (POS) machines and use an SMS based mobile solution.

Villagers can also deposit and withdraw cash at their doorstep. The digitisation at the village dairy co-operative units enables the societies to pay the members digitally and directly into their bank accounts. Additionally, ICICI Bank in association with ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth (ICICI Foundation), the CSR arm of the ICICI Group, is imparting free vocational training to the villagers with a special focus on training women.

12 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/CORPORATE

Sysco and Joister to provide free Wi-Fi at 28 railway stations of Konkan Railways The Indian Railways has inaugurated free Wi-Fi facility at 28 railway stations of Konkan Railway.

The Minister of Railways Suresh PrabhakarPrabhu inaugurated the Wi-Fi facility from Kudal Railway Station.

Indian Railways has tied up with Syscon and Joister for provision of 2 Mbps peer to peer 24 hrs free Wi-Fi Internet bandwidth at 28 stations of Konkan Railway.

Sysco and Joister are providing JOISPOT brand Wi-Fi in Pune and Mumbai educational institutes in Maharashtra state and have now undertaken as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity of providing free WiFi bandwidth to the rural area on the Konkan route. The free Wi-Fi Internet bandwidth is provided at the following Railway stations of Konkan Railway: Kolad, Mangaon, Veer, Karanjadi, Inhere, Diwankhavati, Khed, Anjani, Chiplun, Kamte, Sawarda, Aravali Road, Sangameswar, Ukshi, Bhoke, Ratnagiri, Nivasa, Aravali, Vilavade, Rajapur Road, Vaibhavwadi Road, Nandgaon Road, Kankavali, Sindhudurg, Kudal, Zarap, Sawantwadi Road and Madure.

Unlimited free Wi-Fi facility will be provided at 28 stations from Kolad to Madure in the initial phase with a peer to peer speed of 2 Mbps. The system can provide access to about 300 users at bigger stations and about 100 users at smaller stations.

This facility will help travelling public, commutes and tourists on Indian Railways to access essential information and they could use their time productively while waiting for trains at railway stations.

Infosys Foundation partners Shivganga Samagra Gramvikas Parishad Infosys Foundation has partnered with Shivganga Samagra Gramvikas Parishad, a NGO working for development solutions of rural India, to work for the sustainable development of tribal villages of Jhabua - Alirajpur districts of Madhya Pradesh.

The partnership is to transform the village and its community in a holistic and integrated manner, covering aspects related to education, vocational training, community development and conservation of natural resources.

The grant provided by Infosys Foundation is aimed at benefitting 500,000 villagers over a period 5 years, will facilitate a planned, holistic development program. Some of the intended milestones of the program include running a skill development program to empower tribal youth, establishing a training center at Dharampuri village, and creating awareness and training of village youths for prosperity through conservation and enrichment of natural resources. Technical training, establishment of village libraries and investments in energy solutions are some of the other impactful initiatives that are part of the program.

Speaking about the initiative, Sudha Murty, Chairperson, Infosys Foundation, said, “It is in the heart of the villages that India lives. Development of our villages by creating sustainable livelihood opportunities is quintessential to accelerate the economic growth of India. The Foundation in collaboration with ShivgangaSamagra Gramvikas Parishad hopes to play a catalytic role in the development of these villages, enable and raise the aspirations of those living in the villages of Jhabua Alirajpur districts, and provide them with the means to achieve dignified lives.� www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 13

NEWS/CORPORATE

SBI Foundation Donates Rs 88 Lakhs to Akshaya Patra The Akshaya Patra Foundation has received a donation of Rs 88 lakhs from SBI Foundation.

The money is donated by the CSR wing of State Bank group. This donation will be invested towards 1,250 Hot Insulated Vessels to keep food hot for 8-10 hours.

The insulated hot boxes would be distributed amongst Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Nathdwara kitchens.

The cheque of Rs 88,08,400 was given to Akshaya Patra on 27 March, 2017 at ISCKON, Bangalore.

Speaking on this occasion Narottham Reddy, President & COO, SBI Foundation said, “We are proud to be partnering with Akshaya Patra which is working towards eradicating malnutrition in India, and happy that these Hot Insulated Vessels will be instrumental in delivering hot and nutritious meal to the children. We look forward to a long term association with the Foundation.”

Acharya Ratna Dasa, Chief Project Manager, Akshaya Patra said, “We are over whelmed by the support from SBI Foundation. We take pride in being the first NGO to receive aid by SBI Foundation and we profusely thank them for associating with us,”.

HCL Foundation to announce CSR grants The HCL Foundation will announce grants of Rs 5 crore each in the fields of education, health and environment through panIndia symposia on “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for Nation Building: The HCL Grant”.

The HCL Foundation symposia are being held “to drive inclusive development models that are innovative, add equitable value and help NGOs gain better understanding on the CSR law and CSR grants”.

The symposia is being conducted by the CSR arm of IT giant HCL Technologies and is targeting 10 cities across the country – Chandigarh, Kolkata, Vijaywada, Mumbai, Bhubneshwar, Guwahati, Imphal, Gandhinagar, Patna and Jaipur.

The capacity building symposiums is designed to educate and strengthen the NGOs that strive for transformation by doing commendable work in rural India in education, health and environment sectors.

Reliance Foundation announces Jio MAMI Award for digital content Nita Ambani, Founder and Chairperson, Reliance Foundation and the co-chair of the Jio MAMI Film Festival has announced the addition of a new category of award, the Award for Excellence in Digital Content to be introduced from this year.

The Award for Excellence in Digital Content has been created to provide a platform for young talent to showcase their storytelling abilities via short films, using the digital medium.

A one of its kind award, it will take its participants from script to screen; from facilitating mentorship in script development, to finance and finally, also provide a platform for exhibition and distribution. The only criteria for this award is that applicants must be between the ages of 21-35 years.

Announcing the new Award, Nita Ambani said, “Last year, Jio dedicated to the nation, one of the world’s most comprehensive and powerful digital networks. Today, I am privileged to introduce ‘The Jio MAMI Reliance Foundation Award for Excellence in Digital Content’. We hope that this award will encourage young talent to break the boundaries of their creative prowess and take Indian cinema to new and greater heights, especially in the digital space.”

Twenty-five participants will be shortlisted and mentored by celebrated Indian filmmakers over two days at an all-expenses paid residential Masterclass in Mumbai to guide them towards their final cut. From these, the top ten will receive a prize money of Rs. 250,000 each, upon completion of their short films. In addition, to promote the talent digitally and provide these youngsters with a wide platform, all ten films will be premiered on Jio. This will give millions of Jio viewers a chance to savour the creativity of the young film-makers.

These 10 finalists will also get an opportunity to showcase their short films at this year’s edition of the Jio MAMI Festival. The two best films will receive the Jio MAMI– Reliance Foundation Gold and Silver trophies at the Jio MAMI 2017 closing gala.

A special website, www.jiomamistudios.com has been created for the registration of entries. All participants, who submit their entries by June 20, 2017 in the form of a synopsis and a one-liner script, will be eligible to attend an online Masterclass (webinar).

The Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star, is an inclusive movie feast that showcases the latest cutting-edge, independent cinema – art house fare alongside genre movies from Bollywood and Hollywood and some cult international cinema as well. The festival is run by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image popularly known as MAMI. 14 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/CORPORATE

Idea Cellular invests Rs 18.6 crore on CSR in FY 2015-16

Idea Cellular, one of the leading telecom operators in the country, has invested Rs 18.6 crore on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in FY 2015-16.

In addition, Idea CSR mobilized resources from Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) and state government for mid-day meals and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for the Polio Programme.

Idea's CSR activities reached 9 states, 33 districts and 3,250 villages providing support for education, healthcare and sanitation.

Himanshu Kapania, Managing Director, Idea Cellular said, “Sustainability at Idea Cellular is the holistic pursuit of a vision to be the most admired telecom company that creates long-term value for all stakeholders by balancing economic growth with environmental and social development.”

“Access to information has a significant impact on livelihoods, better healthcare, education, environment and community empowerment. Being at the centre of this transformation, Idea has a significant opportunity to bring technology, networks and expertise of our people to create sustained value for all our stakeholders, customers, community and the society at large,” added Kapania.

Idea has initiated distribution of Solar ‘Urja’ lamps in partnership with IIT Bombay with the objective of providing clean energy to students for studying at night as well as skill development through learning assembling of the lamp. Under the project Idea has planned to assemble and distribute 3.25 lakh lamps in 26 rural blocks of MP, Rajasthan, Odisha and Maharashtra. The pilot phase has started with the training and distribution of lamps in Mohgaon and Mawai blocks of Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh.

Idea has partnered with Pratham Education Foundation to initiate the Angrezi Seekho project through the use of IVRS system on a cell phone. The objective of the project is to test the effectiveness of cell phone as an English-learning tool for underprivileged children, motivate students to read and comprehend simple sentences, enable students to understand syntax and grammar and learn new words. The project is running in seven locations: Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Pilani, Pune, Talasari and Vikramgad.

In order to contribute to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and make Gram Panchayats Open Defecation Free, Idea Cellular has partnered with the Department of Rural Development, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, for the construction of 2,010 toilets in 10 Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana Gram Panchayats.

Idea Cellular has supported Akshaya Patra Foundation in providing hygienic and nutritious mid-day meals to school children in nine locations - Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Cuttack, Puri, Jaipur, Lucknow, Bengaluru and Mysore.

The Idea Tamil Nadu and Chennai Circle Team have supported infrastructure restoration such as civil structure, furniture, computers and printers, books and journals. Renovated toilets, provided water purifiers and water storage tanks in 19 schools in Chennai. The company has partnered with Rotary International’s India National Polio Plus Society (RIINPS) to continue vaccination of children, organize camps and launch awareness campaigns across India.

Idea Cellular's subsidiary companies ITL, ICISL, ABTL aligned with ENT World LLP to provide support in pre-operation counselling to the family and pre-evaluation of the child, pre-operative vaccines to prevent infection, Cochlear implants and postoperative rehabilitation including switch on and auditory verbal therapy. The children (mostly under 5 years of age) identified for the Cochlear implant are from the weaker sections of the society and are mostly drawn from the special schools.

Idea’s sustainability roadmap and execution covers 13 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), the key framework for responsible businesses across the world.

Microsoft hosts its first-ever Accessibility Summit in India

Microsoft India hosted its first-ever Accessibility Summit in India to enhance technology access for people with disabilities.

The summit aimed at demonstrating the business value of accessible technology for organizations, the need for a collaborative effort as well as assessing policy’s role in creating an accessible India. The summit brought together leaders from the government, nonprofit organizations, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and budding technologists to present their views and best practices around accessibility and technology’s potential in aiding inclusion.

Navreet Kang, Secretary, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India said, “We believe that inclusion of persons with disabilities is imperative for India’s growth. It is therefore, critical that we empower them with equal access and opportunity. We look forward to public-private partnerships that can enable better social inclusion and help people with disabilities achieve more.”

Speaking at the summit, Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary, Department of IT, Electronics & Communication, Government of Telangana said, “Our vision is to ensure that persons with diverse abilities have equal access to the physical environment, transportation, information and communication technologies, and to other facilities and services. The Microsoft Accessibility Summit provides an ideal platform to bring together policymakers and influencers to understand the policy environment and chart a direction for making life, experiences and opportunities accessible to all.”

There was a special focus on the need for regulatory policies for innovation on accessible technologies and inclusive hiring practices. These interactions also provided insights into regulations, specifications and standards in terms of accessibility along with an understanding of optimization of existing hardware and software configuration to drive accessibility. www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 15

MOVEMENT

Anthony Lianzuala takes over as Controller General of Accounts Anthony Lianzuala took over as Controller General of Accounts (CGA) in national capital.

Earlier, the Government of India had appointed Anthony Lianzuala, a 1982-batch Indian Civil Accounts Service (ICAS) Officer, as the new Controller General of Accounts (CGA), Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance with effect from May 1, 2017. He will be the first person from the North-Eastern region to hold this position.

Lianzuala, a graduate from the Hindu College of Delhi University and has worked at higher positions in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Rural Development.

Anthony Lianzuala was the first Director of training institute in the field of Public Financial Management and Accounting in the North-East named INGAF-NER, based in Aizawl, Mizoram. He is highly credited for his IT initiatives in the North-Eastern Region. He was instrumental in computerising the functions of the State Treasuries of Mizoram. He has also served in Mizoram as Secretary in various departments including Agricultural Marketing, Border Trade and Relief & Rehabilitation. He was also selected as Managing Director of North-Eastern Agricultural Marketing Corporation (NERAMAC), a public sector undertaking based in Guwahati.

Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi assumes charge of Chairman of National Commission for Minorities

Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi has assumed charge of the Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities in New Delhi.

After assuming the charge, Rizvi said that the Commission will work for the welfare and development of minorities. Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi is a graduate in Arts and also holds Diploma in Mechanics. He served as Chairman, U.P Minority Finance Development Corporation Ltd. Rizvi has been actively participating in social service. He worked for the improvement of the basic facilities and working conditions of Beedi workers and Weaver community in Uttar Pradesh and also worked for Communal Harmony and National Integrity.

George Kurian appointed Vice-Chairman of National Commission for Minorities The Minister of State for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has appointed George Kurian as ViceChairman of National Commission for Minorities. Shri Kurian is a renowned social and educational activist from Kerala. Earlier, noted social activist from Uttar Pradesh, Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi was appointed as Chairman of National Commission for Minorities.

Other appointed members of the Commission are Sulekha Kumbhare, Sunil Singhi and Vada Dasturji Khurshed Kaikobad Dastoor.

16 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

interview

"We are looking at our involvement in healthcare and education..."

Would you tell us about Zebronics' CSR projects?

Founded in 1997, Zebronics is a multimedia speaker, IT peripherals, LED TV, air coolers & surveillance solutions brand with a mission to provide products which are great on design, performance, yet so easy on pocket that every household in the country can afford. Like any other world-class companies, Zebronics is proud of its success, but it also does not stop them from doing even better.

For Zebronics, CSR has always been at a very personal level. The good part is that even before the CSR mandate was passed in 2013, Zebronics has been doing such philanthropic activities and the mandate has not changed the way the company looks at CSR. In fact the company believes in being a socially active company and taking a small step forward with its employees in building a bright future for everyone. Going ahead, healthcare and education would be the 2 areas where Zebronics would steer its maximum focus on. Throwing more light on this, Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics shares with SPOI about its recent CSR initiatives and about its CSR vision for 2017.

CSR has always been a vital part of the Zebronics brand. Zeb Tech, Zeb Learn, Zeb Environment, Zeb Health form the key divisions under our CSR wing. Some of our key initiatives are – Zeb Tech: Under Zeb Tech we undertake educational activities, wherein we conduct GK based learning programs in school. We have had close to 750+ schools that we have worked with and pushed students to participate in quiz rounds, debates etc.

Zeb Learn: Through Zeb Learn programs we visit orphanages, spend some quality time with the kids and conduct interactive activities along with funding their educational needs.

Zeb Environment: Under our Zeb Environment initiative, we take immense pride in proclaiming and volunteering to clean our beaches and several other initiatives to keep the Mother earth clean.

We have been an active part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by taking to the streets and doing our bit in cleaning. Very recently, we have also given away saplings to plant on the marina beach in aid of Vardah.

Zeb Health: Under our Zeb health initiative, we have set up a clinic on the outskirts of Chennai (funded by us) which focuses on providing consultation with the doctor and free medication. We also support an Aged home, where recently we have provided a yoga instructor to take classes, especially for senior citizens.

Challenges faced in implementing CSR projects?

We have not faced any challenges when it comes to CSR implementation. Initially we started out small and became involved with several small-time projects. After a period of time we collaborated with several NGO organizations that enriched us and assisted us in the implementation of projects which turned out to be successful.

We feel small steps drive us to bigger goals of life; it needs to be balanced with the right eco system and vision.

What is your CSR vision for 2017?

We wish to serve the underprivileged and the marginalized, so we ensure to involve ourselves right from the beginning.

We would like to sentimentalize every experience and hence spend a lot of quality time to build memories. Our CSR is on a very personal level if you ask, we have allotted days to be involved in the coast clean up or spending hours on educating kids or engaging them in fun activities.

What is your mantra of running a successful CSR program?

As I have mentioned earlier, it should not be forced upon you. It should come from within and the goodness within us. Every small activity lets us cherish memories in the future and it doesn’t limit to that alone. As you see a change, you become a process of change too.

What kind of investments does Zebronics makes into CSR? The CSR mandate has not changed the way we look at CSR. We at Zebronics believe in taking a step forward and being a socially active organization by joining hands and creating a better future. Giving back to the society is the whole idea behind CSR activities. This is the reason we involve our own in-house team and not rely largely on any third-party activities. For us CSR is not just an expense; we put our heart and soul into every activity that we undertake and truly believe in doing good with the work we are doing.

How do you plan to position your company in CSR & Sustainability?

We are planning to increase the footprint in most cities. We are constantly working on expanding and evolving our CSR activities. Our involvement in healthcare and education is something we are looking at in a detailed perspective. For the ongoing year, we are also doing a lot of activities with regards to the environment and sustainability. n Samrita Baruah samrita@spoindia.org www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 17

COLUMN

CSR is Integral to HGS Growth

HGS CSR Framework focuses on four areas - Education, Healthcare, Skill Development and Empowering Differently-abled A research study by Glassdoor reveals that about 69% employees decline jobs from employers with bad reputation while 84% are ready to leave the current organization for reputed employers.

Developing into an employer of choice today not only requires an employer to have a great work environment, but also have a socially responsible, trustworthy and ethical corporate culture. Employees want to work for companies that care for them and value their willingness to participate in issues and social causes that matter to them.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reflects an organization’s business values and aims at both mutual development of the organization and the community simultaneously. HGS’ CSR strategy is inspired by the pioneering thoughts of Late Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja, Founder, Hinduja Group, “My dharma (duty) is to work so that I can give.”

HGS’ CSR framework primarily focuses on four areas – Education, Healthcare, Skill Development and Empowering Differently-abled - that HGS believes will impact India’s future growth and prosperity. We have partnered with several renowned NGOs with different philosophies and work areas in the past few years, who share a similar vision to achieve a positive impact on society holistically.

Education: HGS funds education for underprivileged students to help them complete their education and earn a living.

Our CSR activities with a partner NGO are designed to engage more than 5,000 children in sports-based development programs to bring about a positive change in the attitude and behavior related to health, gender and education. We are also taking active steps in addressing malnutrition to eradicate hunger by providing nutritious meals every day. These mid-day meals delivered, in partnership with one of India’s largest non-profit organizations, help children concentrate more on studies, decrease the rate of school drop outs and 18 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

increase school enrolment.

We believe in gender equality and run programs to spread awareness in rural areas about equal rights, especially for women, and promote education for girl child. We have offered scholarships and state-ofthe-art technology (Technology Enabled Learning Program) at a Hosur-based school to ensure quality education and instill confidence in students to complete their education and become contributing members of the community.

Healthcare: HGS is relentlessly striving to provide essential and superior healthcare services to local communities.

The organization has provided holistic tuberculosis (TB) care to the underprivileged by rapidly diagnosing drug resistant TB patients with the help of state-of-the-art medical procedures and offer treatment accordingly. HGS Operate Advanced Mobile Health Units (AMHU) for tribal population in Maharashtra to provide affordable healthcare, and ensure improved quality of life index of India through better prevention and awareness about hygiene practices. For family welfare, HGS has set up water plants to provide access to safe and clean drinking water to underprivileged communities in Bengaluru, resulting in reduction in water-borne disease illnesses and women drudgery, and increased awareness in WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) goals in the community.

Skill Development: HGS is working to improve employability of more than 1,800 youths across Mysuru in Karnataka, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and Siliguri in West Bengal. The program includes setting up skill development centers and vocational courses to create livelihood opportunities, offering soft skill training to rural youth and enhancing access to employment opportunity by providing special skills training in IT enabled services and BPM services. We also support technical vocational training institutions for overall self-development and capacity building of the youth.

The Youth Livelihood Projects use an innovative end-to-end delivery model that identifies and meets youth’s employability and life skill needs. These projects are targeted towards empowering underserved youth with right training and support to help them become responsible members of the community.

Empowering Differently-abled People: HGS has partnered to empower differently abled people by setting up a capacity center model to train 100 differently-abled youth and help them earn a livelihood. This program will also aid in sensitizing and training potential recruiter companies to hire and manage differentlyabled candidates.

CSR is more like an invisible culture an unwritten contract with the community.

Organizations today consider CSR not only as a business engagement but also a way to turn employees into their treasured assets. At HGS, we have been driving strategically planned CSR programs and clubs which engage employees in different activities for pre-decided work hours.

Although voluntary, we have seen a major number of employees participate in these programs as and when they are planned.

The HGS CSR Clubs induct employees on the various programs, post which their commitment towards the CSR activities for certain work hours are recorded. Our CSR programs, the activities and updates are available digitally for employees to track and update themselves.

It is always important to allow employees to align themselves with the company culture, get involved in committees, take active interest in CSR initiatives and ultimately drive the company to become an Employer of Choice.

Smita Gaikwad Senior VP – Corporate Comm. and CSR Hinduja Global Solutions

COLUMN

NASSCOM Foundation provided volunteers from the IT-BPM industry to help citizens through DigiDhan Melas and free helpline service India is a country where 95% of monetary transactions are cash based.

On the night of November 8, the Prime Minister announced a complete ban on 1,000 and 500 rupee notes amounting to 86% of the currency, as a part of the government’s efforts to crack down on the parallel black money based economy, the country was left in a state of shock and panic.

A sudden move to a cashless economy left a major part of the population stranded – vendors who mostly dealt in cash, households with savings in cash, had nowhere to go. The unorganized sector was left scrambling to adjust to the changed policies. While on a macro level, these changes were being hailed as positive and transformative, the direct impact on the economy and the citizens of India was too large to be ignored.

The country went through a period of adjustment – long queues in front of the ATMs and banks became a common sight.

A heavily cash dependent population was badly hit and there was a real scare of riots emerging because of this decision.

This is when the Government of India set up a quick crack team including its think tank – The NITI Aayog (earlier called Planning Commission of India), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), nationalized and private banks, NASSCOM and NASSCOM Foundation, to contain this

crisis. In less than a week’s time, the team came out with a ready action plan to handhold citizens switch to cashless transactions.

To get widespread public attention, large scale DigiDhan Melas (translated as Digital Money Fairs) were organized across 100+ cities with all banks and digital transaction players coming forward and showcasing their cashless solutions.

NASSCOM Foundation, pitched in by providing volunteers from the ITBPM industry through its MyKartavya (Meaning: My Duty) program to help the citizens visiting these fairs adopt at least one of the available solutions.

In its attempt to further amplify this initiative, NASSCOM Foundation created its own step by step, easy to understand curriculum for all categories of digital transactions including eWallets, Unified Payment gateways (UPI – Mobile app based payment solutions for direct bank account transactions), Debit cards, Aadhar (India’s Unique ID equivalent to Social Security Number in the US) enabled payment system and USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) and organized volunteer drives under ‘Each one Teach Ten’ pedagogy across various cities. The Foundation engaged with 2,000+ volunteers who in turn were able to train over 18,000 people on different cashless modes of transactions, with the numbers increasing as we speak.

Ministry of Electronics and IT also launched a free TV channel called ‘DigiShala’ (Classroom of Digital Learning and cashless financial transactions) and ‘Cashless India’ website to help the citizens get hands-on with cashless transaction tools. The Ministry, in partnership with NASSCOM has also floated a free helpline service with a toll free number – 14444, to help people complete their cashless transactions with ease. This helpline was able to resolve 300,000+ queries from across the country.

Owing to these efforts, by March 2017, the digital transactions had grown 23 times to 6.4 million amounting for Rs 24.25 billion and the situation had stabilized.

Today, even though cash still remains the single largest mode of transaction in India, people are much less dependent on it with the most underserved of the citizens knowing how to use an e-wallet or a debit card or a UPI app or similar digital transaction tools – A massive win for a country who is not just witnessing but living a digital revolution.

Shrikant Sinha CEO NASSCOM Foundation

www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 19

EVENT REPORT

CSR Fair 2017 The first CSR Fair focused on showcasing CSR activities and sharing best practices with all stakeholders Inaugurating the CSR Fair 2017, Anant G. Geete, Union Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises said that the Swachata Abhiyan is running successfully just because of the active participation of CPSEs. Union Minister Anant Geete exhorted upon the CPSEs to focus on core areas of social sector especially the Swachata Abhiyan, education and drinking water on priority basis.

In his welcome address, Dr Madhukar Gupta, additional Secretary, Department of Public Enterprises highlighted the importance of this event and appreciated the overwhelming response of the participants.

The minister said it is just because of the lack of sanitation facilities in our rural areas school that is aggravating the school dropout cases of girls. Geete said lack of basic infrastructure facilities in rural areas is hindering the quest of students for secondary and higher education as there is no dearth of either funds or resources in our country and hence CSR activities should be oriented in this direction.

On this occasion Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Babul Supriyo lauded the role of CPSEs in fostering the CSR measures satisfactorily.

The objective of fair was to provide a leading platform to corporate leaders, organizations, implementing agencies and business experts to identify practical solutions for the problems concerning the participatory implementation of CSR projects at the ground level. Besides, this is to brainstorm a way forward to integrate CSR into core business values of the corporate houses, and to give an opportunity to network and build mutually enriching strategic relationships with various stakeholders and key partners.

This mega event was being organised by the Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises; PHD Chamber in collaboration with ONGC, to provide a platform to all stakeholders, including central ministries/departments, CPSEs/ state PSUs, private companies, NGOs/foundations etc. to showcase their CSR activities, sharing of their best practices and also an opportunity to connect with other stakeholders.

The event saw launch of CSR Compendium, an exhaustive review of success stories of CSR initiatives of CPSEs/state PSUs, private companies, and NGOs/foundations.

The CSR Fair 2017 objective was to provide a leading platform to corporate leaders, organizations, implementing agencies and business experts to identify practical solutions for the problems concerning the participatory implementation of CSR projects at the ground level. Besides, it helped in giving an opportunity to network and build mutually enriching strategic relationships with various stakeholders and key partners.

On this occasion the success stories of creative and innovative CSR interventions were shared and stakeholders were sensitized about leveraging CSR for competitive advantage.

In the realm of business sustainability, SEBI has mandated business responsibility reporting for top 500 listed companies based on their market capitalization from April 1, 2016. This move is an effort to improve corporate governance practices and transparency in terms of reporting of socially responsible activities carried out by the business houses.

20 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

R.N. Bagdalkar, Director (Human Resources), Bharat Electronics Limited Would you talk about CSR activities done by Bharat Electronics?

We are a defence public sector working since 1954 and we are into CSR right from the inception of our organisation. For CSR we have identified 7-8 areas which includes: Education, Healthcare, Environmental Sustainability, Rural Development, Protection of Rural Heritage and others.

In the last 2 years, we have adopted around 140 government schools and built around 900 washrooms for these schools.

We have adopted 3 villages in Yadgir district which is as per Planning Commission, the most backward district. We have taken up sanitation, building of schools, health and education in the district. Apart from that we have also taken up the skill development activity under which we also do apprenticeship which we conduct in our factory. We have adopted 6 ITI's where we have added vocational courses.

This year again we will adopt another 7 ITI’s.

One more thing that we our doing for environment sustainability is doing sewage treatment plant near our Bangalore factory called Dodo Apam Sagar Lake. It is a major work where we are spending about Rs. 13 crore. In the last 3-4 years we have spent about Rs. 8285 crore on CSR and we will continue to invest in CSR as we believe in giving back to the society.

What is the CSR budget for FY201718 and activities where you would be focusing?

Our budget for this year is roughly about Rs. 30 crore and the focus is on adoption of ITI villages and sewage treatment plants.

We are also into sustainable development of solar power plants, Swachh Bharat and Clean Ganga. In terms of CSR spend, we first spend on Swachh Bharat and the remaining amount we will invest in Clean

Ganga.

Any innovative project that you have undertaken under CSR? We did an innovative CSR project in Telangana which is agriculture driven and has a mix of agricultural scientist and farmers in the village. The farmer uploads the photograph of the plants and herbs and then it goes to the scientist sitting in the agricultural university. The scientist uploads the information with respect to the kind of treatment to be done every week and this is pasted on the notice board of village panchayat. All this has led to an increase of about 25% in crop yield to the farmers. The project was done in Telangana and it is running for the past 2 years.

to National Sports Development Fund and also to Special Olympics. Through NGO Deep Chand Society we have provided tailoring coaching to 25 women and girls in North Delhi.

What is your CSR plan for FY201718?

We have 33% allocated towards Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and besides our own CSR policies mention that 20% of your CSR budget will go towards development of sports and the rest would obviously be focused on education, skill development, health and environment conservation.

Would you talk about innovative CSR projects done by MMTC? The waste generated in MMTC and in MMTC Housing Colony is given to an NGO that specialises in waste management and this NGO collects the waste, does all the shredding and the segregation and also composing. So whatever is produced or the recycle goods are sold and the income proceeds is used for education of the children of the rag pickers. Apart from that we also focusing on the education of their children in various slum areas.

Ravi Bhamniya, Assistant Manager, CSR, Power Finance Corporation Venita Solomon, Manager, MMTC Would you tell us about CSR activities done by MMTC in FY2016-17?

In FY2016-17 the focus was on Swachh Bharat because as per the mandate of the government, 33% of the funds are to be spent on Swachh Bharat activities. We constructed toilets, drinking water facilities and hand washing facilities for government schools in Orissa and installed hand pumps in remote areas of Uttar Pradesh. The balance amount was used in creating health care facilities in Orissa's tribal dominated areas. The company also made contribution

Would you talk about CSR activities undertaken by PFC in FY2016-17?

We have a budget of around Rs. 166 crore for CSR and we are working on 5 thrust areas - renewable energy, sanitation, skill development, environment, sports and people with disabilities. For FY201617, we have done renewable, street lighting, sanitation, Swachh Bharat, and Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan. We have also contributed to the initiatives of ministry of power as per their requirement. For FY2016-17, we have done a financial contribution of Rs. 55 crore to Swachh Bharat and we had an approval of Rs. 15 crore for skill development and we also have one sanctioned project on rain water www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 21

EVENT REPORT harvesting.

Along with NHAI, we are also spending around Rs. 13-14 crore for planting trees near national highway in Nagpur. We are also having projects in the range of Rs. 6 crore on skill development, solar technology and giving financial assistance to companies for solar lightning in the remote and backward areas.

Would you talk about the govt projects related to Swachh Bharat and Skill India?

In the financial year we had Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan where we had sanctioned around 200 construction of toilets in government schools in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan and that was been done through 2 PSUs and with the help of state government and district authorities.

Skill development, we implement through agencies from time to time as we have partners such as CIPET which is a government organisation. We have sanctioned around 34 skill development projects through different training partners in all of this year. Around 34,000 students from underprivileged background have been trained by different partners and we ensure that they get placement.

Dr. Pramod Mohan Johri, Chief General Manager (HR & A), Goa Shipyard Limited

What is Goa Shipyard's CSR spent in FY2015-16?

We have spent Rs. 3 crore for CSR in FY 2015-16. We started our CSR journey in 2011 when Tata Institute of Social Sciences carried out a survey and the waste. The survey revealed 5 projects that Goa Shipyard will take out for as a longterm (for 5 years). Goa Shipyard focused on: Watershed management programme; Skill development programme; DD development; agricultural program and others.

Please name CSR projects that you have implemented in FY2015-16?

In FY2015-16, we produced vegetable and we market all vegetables to 5 stars hotels in Goa through organic farming.

We have developed this model for the 22 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

first time and for this we have made 5 societies. In these societies, we have women who contribute their land and we provide seeds and fertilisers. We produce chilli, brinjal and many other vegetables. In dairy development we have provided poor farmers with cows and this is Kamdhenu program in Goa. In this 25% of total outlay was from government and 75% contribution was from Goa Shipyard. This has not only given milk but also provided cow dung and gas for cooking which has helped society at large.

What is your CSR plan for FY201718?

In 18 districts, water level is going down so we are digging trenches so that water is arrested and there is proper accumulation of water. There are around 25,000 trenches so when water is coming from the high level it is arrested water table grows up. The other thing was with the school dropouts, in Goa the shipbuilding is a major industry and ship is built by fabrication. The school dropout boys are trained in fabrication so that they are employable. Around 80 boys have got employment in ship building industry.

Are you working with NGOs for your CSR program?

Dairy development and agricultural are being managed by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and these are provided at places where tribal’s are residing in Goa and at other places they are doing training and development.

Dr B.K. Ranganath, Director, CSR, Antrix Corporation Limited What is the CSR spent that you have done in FY2016-17?

The total budget is about 60.34 crore that we have spend for CSR activities like sanitation and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan where we are building community toilets as well as school toilets and sewage water treatment. We have done another major work by rehabilitating physically challenged people in Karnataka and as well as in Sriharikota. We have adopted one village in Dholpur district where the focus is on

integrated sustainable development area.

We have also done health care education and skill development activities in 2016.

Would you talk in detail about the model village?

The model of village development in Dholpur district is selected for 3 years and we have completed one year of development activity. It is basically a holistic and integrated approach for tribals as well as the natural resources management. We are concentrating on basic facilities like providing drinking water, sanitation and solar light to the village. We are almost reaching a stage where we can develop the village as an ODF. We are concentrating on rainwater harvesting and women empowerment thereby focusing on holistic development thereby making it a model village.

What is your plan for FY2017-18?

In FY2017-18 we are continuing with Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. We would like to concentrate more on the government where we can provide community toilets and we would also like to take more number of villages based on the result we get from the Dholpur district also some of the important activities like water recycling.

M.D. Varghese, GM (IR) & Head (CSR), Cochin Shipyard Would you tell us about Cochin shipyard CSR activities?

Coaching Shipyard is a government of India company under Ministry of Shipping and we have been doing very good and in terms of our business propositions as we are profitable for the last 22 years. We have spend Rs. 40 crore towards various big and small CSR project mainly in and around Cochin and across state of Kerala because we operate from Kerala.

Conventionally our CSR activities are basically on health education and community development. In FY201617, we have spent Rs. 7.22 crore towards CSR project and for FY2017-18 we are investing around Rs. 8.72 crore towards various already approved CSR projects. We are contributing 33% to Swachh Bharat.

We have conducted various health programs, blood donation program and also contributed to cancer patients in terms of money and medicine. Also under the platform called WIPS (women in public sector) they conduct lots of women oriented development program and we support them through CSR. There are some projects where we work with member of parliament for local development schemes. We have installed MRI facilities in the hospital where we have contributed Rs. 1.5 crore rupees, a local MP contributed Rs. 1.5 crore and another MP also contributed for this scheme scheme.

So together it was around Rs. 6 crore. Now we are going for a linear sort of Cancer chemotherapy facility and we are also contributing.

Verticals where we are focusing in FY2017-18?

33% will go for Swachh Bharat that is towards drinking water, solar power plants and these are the basic initiatives we are doing. The remaining amount will be utilised towards health and education.

Lieutenant CDR Vikrant Malhan, Central Coalfields Limited CCL is top 5 tender in CSR for FY2016-17. What's your CSR vision?

Our chairman Gopal Singh has a very clear vision that unless we give it to the society the society cannot prosper. CCL focuses on unconventional CSR activities which are offbeat which are not taken up by many CPSEs.

You are talking about football being one of the unique CSR activity so what is the CSR plan with respect to sports?

We have started the mission Olympic 2024. Mission Olympic 2024 is to empower the youth and children of Jharkhand in our academy and getting trained from various Olympic disciplines which includes football, wrestling, archery, athletics and Taekwondo so we are concentrating on 8 to 10 year old children across Jharkhand

Model we are sure that they could transform themselves from what they are to what they could be.

Dr Sudhir Gupta, National Advisory Board Member, Sarthak Educational Trust

providing them the training that is needed to be an Olympic player and giving them first class training in our academy which are run through CSR.

What is the CSR investment for FY2016-17?

There is no barrier when it comes to unique initiatives which are concerning the rural people of the rural locations. We have carried out extensive mine water utilisation and used expensive technology by making water drinkable and portable. We are also concentrating on bridging the demandsupply gap between paramilitary and arm forces by giving the youth proper training into various disciplines which make them appear for various UPSC and various state level civil service exam. We also have a Unique Academy called CCL Ke Lal and CCL Ki Ladli and Academy preparing for IIT. In fact we have shown splendid result of having 8 out of 11 children selected for IIT.

I see not many CPSEs taking about unique initiatives related to CSR. Why did CCL focused on these unique initiatives?

One has to be concentrated to grass root and real time requirements to challenges that people face. Our chairman Gopal Singh is of the firm opinion that all the activities that happen to be carried out should be unique because most of them are coming from the requirement of basic needs which are human being would require and therefore we are very proud that our conventional activities have become a support amongst organisations. In fact some of the public sectors which are not doing well if but if they adopt Kayakalp

Would you tell us about the projects you are doing for the disabled people?

Sarthak Educational Trust has been in existence for the last 9 years and we are working with disabled people which includes visually handicapped and hearing impaired as well as automatically challenge in the second vertical is the early intervention that is 0 to 3 year children where we try to minimise the disability by early inclusive education where we are trying to educate disabled people along with the normal children in the schools of Delhi government.

How big is Sarthak Education Trust in terms of reach?

We are all across India as we have presence in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Delhi, Ludhiana and Chandigarh. We are trying our best to start new centres in Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai and hopefully by the end of 2020, we would be present in almost all the states of India. Till now we have trained almost 5,000 people in PWD from various kind of disabilities majorly in 3 centres - IT, retail and hospitality.

What is your CSR plan for FY201718?

We want to increase our spent and we also want to also start more and more centres. We are trying our best to partner with Government of India and with various corporates. We don't want to compete with NGOs but we want to work with NGO working in this field to join hands so that benefits reach the last person in the village who is disable. We want to include them and empower them so that they are on their feet. l Pravin Prashant pravin@spoindia.org www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 23

EVENT REPORT

Focus was on meeting UN SDGs through ICT innovations The ICT4D Conference, was held in India for the first time, is a multidisciplinary gathering of inspiring leaders, thought-provoking speakers, and engaged participants from around the world to explore how innovation in technology is increasing the impact of development work to make a measurable difference in millions of people’s lives and to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

K.T. Rama Rao, Minister of Information Technology and Industries, Government of Telangana opened the ninth annual ICT4D Conference with a keynote speech where he reinforced his vision for Telangana to follow the path from innovation to impact, leading the charge to harness technology to empower citizens with access to information, advice, and opportunities.

“India is uniquely positioned to innovate to create solutions and opportunities for the world, and the state of Telangana is synonymous with innovation and incubators,” K.T. Rama Rao said to the approximately 1,000 delegates from across the Indian and international public sector, technology sector, and development and humanitarian organizations, gathered at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre.

24 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan echoed these thoughts in his opening plenary discussion with Kate Wilson, CEO, Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), where he discussed how Telangana is tieing its development to the SDGs, and accelerating progress by using technology for innovation.

Schuyler Thorup, Executive VicePresident for Overseas Operations, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) said, “India is at the forefront of digital innovation for the SDGs. India is also a global leader in the journey towards achieving the SDGs by forging partnerships between government and NGOs to empower frontline workers with digital tools in order to create lasting positive impact. It is very exciting for the ICT4D Conference to be here in India for the first time.”

On the opening plenary panel moderator Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) said that the fourth industrial revolution means that the boundaries between industries are being blurred by Big Data: “This innovation in the way we collect, analyse and act on data is what can help drive impact for sustainable and equitable development, and there are real life examples of how

Big Data is helping society – in India and around the world.”

Data visualization tools are also critical in the analysis process. Chuck Conley, Nonprofit and Global Organizations Account Manager, Environmental Systems Research Institution (Esri) said, "While development work on-ground is critical, its efforts are sometimes hard to communicate: “ICT tools can help to visualize and communicate insights that are critical to the success of the development efforts.”

Rebecca Moore, Director, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Outreach, Google led an insightful session on using the power of the cloud to empower the development community to overcome challenges. Google’s Earth Engine platform gives the opportunity for anyone with a web browser, based anywhere to access fresh, relevant data at their fingertips. The huge data resources through the platform can help to derive actionable insights from local to global scale.

“Both private sector companies and NGOs need to adopt a multi-faceted approach when it comes to ‘Open’,” said Rhiannan Price, Senior Manager, Seeing a Better World Program, DigitalGlobe.

Syed Raza, Senior Director, Data,

Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) agreed that the approach to data sharing partnerships should be based on proven models and technical, commercial and government examples where the model has worked. Tangible incentives have a proven record of success in these ‘data for good’ models.

Aditya Agrawal, Director, Data Ecosystems Development, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), reinforced the need to harness the data revolution for sustainable development. Data can improve decisionmaking and policy, citizen empowerment and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation – all driving factors towards meeting the SDGs. “First and foremost, we want to use data to do good,” summarized

agreed Dr. Kyriacos Koupparis, Regional Science, Technology and Innovation Advisor, Asia, United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

However, Dr. Partha Chakrabarti, Director and Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur emphasized that while technology provides ways to solve problems, these must be appropriate innovations that use people’s own creativity to help themselves in their everyday activities: “Disruptive hi-tech innovations will only ever make people laborers, leaving them behind. We have to use people’s creativity to solve challenges.”

Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India detailed one such program – Digital Village Harisal – India’s first smart village. Microsoft

Technology Services highlighted the need for commercial investors to achieve scale.

Ultimately, said Lauren Woodman, CEO, NetHope, the development sector can learn from the digital sector how it can adapt in order to achieve the SDGs. “There is a $5-7 trillion shortfall to achieve the SDGs. This is a big gap, but tech can fill it, if we ask ourselves what we can do differently,” she said. Private sector technology companies have embraced the digital revolution wholeheartedly and they now have a strong focus on digital strategies. They are investing in data, they are asset-light, they are open to change and agile in the face of it. Development sector organisations need to move towards this model, argued Lauren: “It is a radically uncomfortable way to

Frank Schott, Vice President of Global Programs, NetHope, emphasizing the need to bring organizations together to share best practice and forge effective partnerships. “We need to bring the good work together to accelerate techniques that will help us to do more good with the data that we have. With this, we can improve development outcomes and save more lives.”

“There are many things in our world today that hinder development,” said Cherian Thomas, CEO, World Vision India on the opening panel session, “But technology can help overcome these challenges.”

“The principles of digital development give a good framework to address development challenges,”

and its private and NGO sector partners worked to create a digital village model that can be replicated at scale, to change the lives of an off-grid rural population.

While context-specific solutions are critical to success in the field, Neil Sahota, IBM Master Inventor, IBM Watson Group said that for those across sectors looking at developing those solutions, cognitive computing could offer the answer to the perennial question: “what if ?”. “This requires a very different way of thinking, but cognitive computing will allow us to do things that we can’t even imagine now,” he said.

To achieve real impact from these programs, and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), scalability is critical. Radha Basu, CEO, iMerit

think about the way we do things. But, to achieve the SDGs, to help the people in need to reach those levels, we have to encourage different thinking.”

The conference was organized by a consortium of partners including Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, World Vision, NetHope, the Anudip Foundation, Dalberg, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), iMerit Technology Services, and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). It was supported by Microsoft, Google Earth Outreach, CGIAR, Cyient, Digital Globe, DuPont, Oxfam, aWhere/GDA, and RTI International. l Pravin Prashant pravin@spoindia.org www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 25

COVER STORY

SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017 The summit was a grand success thanks to pan-India presence of speakers and awardees. Emerging NGOs were felicitated for the first time in the history of CSR, even CPSEs were awarded on the basis of CSR investment in FY2015-16 The 3rd edition of “SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017” was held on May 25 at Hotel Shangri La’s Eros, New Delhi. The main theme of the event was "Marching Towards Sustainable Economy Through CSR”.

The summit brought all stakeholders from NGOs, corporates and government on a common platform thereby enabling them to network and interact on how to make Indian economy sustainable through CSR. The half day event comprised of impactful discussions and deliberations supplemented with an expo and awards ceremony.

The summit had three sessions inaugural session followed by two panel sessions on Marching towards sustainable economy through CSR and will corporate innovations make 26 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

CSR sustainable?

There were two categories of awards - SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 and SPO India Leadership Award 2017 (CPSE).

SPO India felicitated Emerging NGOs judged on the basis of effectiveness in impacting the targeted communities, involvement of their personnel; sustainability and long term impact to the community, as well as activities involved beyond financial contribution. The awards were given to those NGO’s registered in India in the last 5 years.

SPO India felicitated Aaradhya Foundation, Akshar Foundation, Cuddles Foundation, Cyber Peace Foundation, Donate An Hour, Janwaar Castle Community

Organisation, Khushi Baby Association, Nudge Lifeskills Foundation, Unnayan Foundation Trust and Waste Warriors.

SPO India also felicitated CPSEs based on their CSR investment in FY2015-16. In this category, National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) was ranked No.1 followed

by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), Rural Electrification Corporation Limited REC) and Central Coalfields Limited (CCL).

The expo area had booths from Happy Horizons Trust, We Care Foundation, EarthWatch India, NASSCOM Foundation, Samadhan Foundation, The Toy Bank, Praani, Agape Foundation and Philanthrope.

Ajay Chaudhary, Deputy General Manger (Marketing), ALIMCO We are a public sector company under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and we are one of the leading implementing agencies for implementation of CSR activities for various private and public sector companies.

We were incorporated in the year 1972 and are a Scheduled C Mini Ratna company, registered as a not for profit company.

We have 6 factories – Kanpur, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Punjab, Jabalpur and a new one is coming up in Ujjain to cater to the pan India requirement.

To reach out to the north-

eastern states we are based at Guwahati.

In the last census done in 2011, the total disability population in our country is 2.68 crores. Out of this, the people who are having locomotor or orthopaedic disabilities is around 54 lakhs, which is 20% of the population, followed by visually impaired population and the hearing impaired people with speech disability and the mentally impaired ones. The top 5 states having highest number of disabled people is UP, Maharashtra, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana and West Bengal.

About 70% of disabled people are staying in rural areas and 30% in urban areas.

Coming on to employment status of disabilities, more than 75% of the people are unemployed. The total market size of the aids, appliances and equipments is around 1500 crores. 17 of our products are all ISI marked.

If you see last year, ALIMCO has catered to 3.36 lakh people with disabilities and distributed close to 2.40 crores worth of equipments to people with disabilities.

We are operating in a very high volume but low value category. We also distribute these appliances to children with disabilities under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. We have done 3 major camps in which our Honourable PM was the Chief Guest and in these camps we distributed equipments to more than 10,000 people and 10 crores worth of equipments. These camps were held at Vadodara, Navsari and Varanasi. We have also achieved 4 Guinness Book of World Records for putting in highest number of hearing aids in a day; we had installed a thousand hearing aids to 1000 people at Navsari.

Coming on to product portfolio, we have product catering to all kinds of disabilities. Major ones are the orthopaedically impaired equipments and artificial hands and legs. To manufacture these artificial hands and legs we have tied up with a leading German company named Otto Bock and in March this year, we commenced commercial production along with Otto Bock at our factory in Kanpur. It was completely a transfer of technology partnership. For ready to use equipments, we are into motorised wheel chairs, motorised tricycles and conventional handdriven tricycles. For orthopaedically impaired, we also manufacture crutches, walking canes, rollators. For visually impaired, we have specially made for them smartphones, digi-players for school going children, smart cane (made from exclusive technology from IIT), shorthand machine.

The Government though is giving grants to cater to these people; they are too facing a shortage. And so we seek participation from both public and private corporates.

Marching Towards Sustainable Economy

The primary aim of SPO India is to imbibe values of giving back which will make the voluntary sector self sustainable and will also enable the corporates to work towards brand sustainability, thus contributing to the overall growth and well-being of the society. The publication has a healthy mix of readers from the industry and acts as a vital platform for corporations, NGOs and nonprofits agencies, universities and organizations interested in communicating their corporate citizenship, sustainability, philanthropy and socially responsible initiatives.

As per Ministry of Corporate Affairs data, around 5,097 companies in India has invested corporate social responsibility (CSR) spend of Rs 9,822 crore for FY201516 vis-a-vis 7,334 companies spending around Rs 8,803 crore for FY2014-15.

In FY2015-16, the CSR spend has seen a jump of 11.6 percent, thanks to strict compliance of CSR budget by corporate entities.

In terms of vertical, the Top 5 sector contributes round 87% of the total expenditure. The top sectors in CSR are: Health/Eradicating Hunger/ Poverty and Malnutrition/Safe Drinking Water/Sanitation; Education/Differently Enabled/Livelihood; Rural Development; Environment/Animal Welfare/ Conservation of Resources; and Swachh Bharat Kosh. This year we have set out with a clear vision and with ambitious goals to make a difference in the following areas of concern - Healthcare, Education, Rural Development, Environment, Swachh Bharat, Care for the Elderly, Children’s Right’s, Women’s Empowerment and sports. www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 27

COVER STORY

Siddharth Mukherjee, Executive Director, (HR & CSR), IOCL Indian Oil as we are all aware, we call ourselves ‘Energy of India’. We are the largest commercial enterprise in India, largest marketing network, largest pipeline set-up and we are a Fortune 500 company.

Having said this, the CSR spend last year was around 2.17 crores. Whether it is the government initiatives in ensuring smokeless villages, the PM’s Ujala Yojana which is looked at world over as a fine example of what a corporate can do in terms of social upliftment. But we are also under tremendous pressure. Many of you would be aware that the OPEC sessions are on and there is a talk about cutting off supplies. If supplies get cut, the crude gets expensive which results in products becoming expensive. There is a certain level to which the market can actually sustain. Indian unfortunately does not produce oil and gas to the tune that we can consume and therefore it becomes extremely difficult to manage in trying circumstances. Somehow right from the beginning the corporation which was incorporated in 1964 for the purpose of competing with the world’s 7 oil majors has been in the area of LPG, and LPG I say (not in oil terms) the ‘liberalization, privatization and globalization’ competitive environment right from beginning. So the challenges we face are phenomenal.

It is said that social responsibility dawned on the corporate world in India from 2013. One of our refineries in North East has started a hospital way back in 1904, for the people in and around. There is also an Assam School of Nursing which is in operation since 1984. Health, water, sanitation apart whatever is the government mandated projects, you name it we are there. Oil companies have till now been very profitable, but with profit comes

responsibility. The fact is we have to make considerable investments in sustainability.

If I don’t have the bottom line in place, where does my 2% come from, which I will invest in my CSR? So it makes lot of social sense when I say that CSR has to do a lot with business. And sooner I realize this, the better it for me.

My responsibility as a corporate citizen becomes very important, especially when I am in the strategic sector, that I continue to do business in a profitable manner, I continue to deliver the lead and I continue to be competitive in the market. The coming of disruptive technology would also spell a little bit of strain for companies like us – the alternates, the renewable which you all are champions of will carry a cost.

Placing these alternatives at the customer’s end will not be easy. Even Europe and US is struggling to carry that forward. Though it is going to happen very fast that is where companies like us have to react. Also we must attune ourselves to the realities.

But how to take this forward? If I am a socially responsible corporate, then CSR opportunity has become kind of a social revolution in India. We are a country that is trying to do things in a very novel way and if I say that CSR has dawned upon every company since 2013, then I would not be wrong.

Having said that, till 2013, CSR was just a choice. Lots of corporates even said that CSR is compulsive philanthropy, which I think is not very effective in its truer sense. What we want to do today is have collaborative partnerships. I as a company may not be very familiar with the kind of activities that are entailed under CSR or may not be equipped properly to handle big projects, and that’s where the collaboration with other corporates or

partners become effective.

Corporate participation and NGO collaboration should be more effective, as I personally feel as of now it is not so.

There are certain steps in my opinion to make this collaboration more effective • I would vouch for an NGO regulator which would be more effective in doing business.

• In terms of the tendering process, a public sector company cannot take anybody on board on a single tender basis. There are 3 criteria under which it can take a party on a single tender basis – 1. If there are any natural disasters; 2.

Where it is a proprietary item; 3. When I have tendered it a sufficient number of time and not got anyone. This is a collaborative effort which you and I need to sit down and take it forward.

Merely saying that corporates are not doing enough to engage an NGO will not be right to say.

• There has to be a National CSR Center for Excellence in which certain benchmarks have to be put in place, which should be both for the corporates and for the NGOs.

Marching Towards Sustainable Economy through CSR Marching towards sustainable economy through CSR The panelists included: Abhijeet Kumar, Director, CAF Foundation; Mamta Saikia, COO, Bharti Foundation; Sonia Shrivastava, Head, Vodafone Foundation; Uma Ratnu, Director, Nari Uthan Sansthan; Angeli Qwatra, CEO, Centre for Disaster Risk & Safety; Dr 28 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM; Mathew Cherian, CEO, HelpAge India; Partha Rudra, Director-Programmes, Smile Foundation; Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation; Pramel Kumar Gupta, CEO, Vrutti and Saurabh Adeeb, Head, Corporate & Partner Engagement, The Nudge Foundation. The discussion point was how to win a point through CSR

and make our economy sustainable, does corporates engage in transformational CSR and the policy related challenges for creating a sustainable economy through CSR. Uma Ratnu, Director, Nari Uthan Sansthan: The initiative which we started off with just 10 ladies has today, within a

period of 20 years has gone up to 10,000.

We work for women empowerment but we are also working with small children.

The other areas in which we work are health, environment, child labour, awareness programs and disability. After working for two decades with women and socially underprivileged communities in the state of Rajasthan, we have learnt that empowerment of women is a must if you want to give rise to an unbiased and healthy society and that can be achieved by tackling the root cause that continue to keep them uneducated, exploited and vulnerable.

Our mission is to create a compassionate society where rights of children, women, elderly people and disabled persons are respected and where health and education facilities and livelihood opportunities and easily available to everyone without any discrimination.

Mamta Saikia, COO, Bharti Foundation: Sanitation is one of our new programs, but Bharti Foundation mostly works in the field of education. 90% of our projects and resources are spent towards education program. We have our own 254 schools in the villages and these schools are completely free for the poor, unprivileged children. Not only fees, but even books, notebooks and stationeries are given to a kid to encourage them to

attend school. We make sure that there is no barrier due to which a child, more specifically a girl child is debarred from attending school. It’s been 11 years since we are running these schools. We realized that no corporate foundation would have so much of fund so as to open a school where government schools are not available. So 3-4 years back we realized that we have that much of experience and processes to work in rural areas. Working in rural has many challenges – the prime being lack of teachers, proper resources and infrastructure. So we have been successful in creating a model and have also taken the learning that we have gathered from this model to the government schools and this is how we started our program Satya Bharti Learning Centers and quality support program. Here we partner with government schools and by working together with teachers and students we try to enhance the quality of the schools.

In 3-4 years, we have been successful in touching 1,500 government schools. This is how we have worked towards bringing up a sustainable society, but the challenge is on how to scale this up. And of course if your model is strong, scaling up is an easy task.

Abhijeet Kumar, Director, CAF Foundation: For last 20 years our

motto is to make the act of giving more strategic, planned and organized in order to see that the results are better, strong and sustainable. In that process we also look at CSR as an act of giving. So basically we are trying to connect primarily corporates with the non-profit communities to see that the intention with which they are making these investments become more meaningful. We are trying to help corporates providing advisory in designing corporate community initiatives, CSR programs, interpretation of CSR Acts and also getting it delivered in partnership with the local NGOs. Angeli Qwatra, CEO, Centre for Disaster Risk & Safety: Our focus is majorly on disaster preparedness and the whole motto is that we have to reduce or minimize the loss of lives, property and livelihood caused by disasters. India has traditionally been affected by disasters throughout history because of its geoclimatic conditions and now disaster losses are mounting. Man-made disasters are also on the rise and I feel a lot more effort has to be done on disaster. There are very few NGOs or organizations working in this field and that in fact underlines the cause even more. Corporates have a big role to play in it because they are the catalysts and CSR can go a long way in this. Very recently disaster management has been viewed as a www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 29

COVER STORY very important part of CSR of industries, which brings lot of opportunities for NGOs. Partha Rudra, DirectorProgrammes, Smile Foundation: I think CSR can make a contribution towards making sustainable and effective conditions for delivering development services and solutions at scale. In the process of aligning the corporate business strategy with the CSR strategy, which is increasingly been seen in many companies, I believe that what really is happening is that it is leading to the creation of stronger communities, positive workforce and this is something which we can say from the last 15 years of Smile’s own experience.

We are working in 4 major areas – Health, education, livelihood enhancement and women empowerment. We are following 2 models – SVP (Social venture philanthropy) under which we identify and partner with locally embedded NGOs across the country. Right now we are working with 200 NGOs across the country and we have 91 functional educational centres, out of which 70 are running on Action for Child model.

Mathew Cherian, CEO, HelpAge India: The elderly population is nearly about 103 million at the moment. And in spite of all our efforts, there is very little attention coming to the elderly. The elderly people in the opinion of most people always come last. When Section 135 was drafted, elderly was left out but soon there were modifications made and there were revised guidelines in which elderly were included. As a result many corporates kept supporting the elderly cause. Our main line of work is we do medical treatment for the elders, and we treat about 1.6 million elders across the country. We have our huge medical personnel team of 600 people. We also look after the destitute elderly in the old age homes. We are yet to sensitize young children and so we go to schools and colleges and started the ‘Hug Program'. We had expectations that there would be Rs 25,000 crores coming into the system for CSR, but the real figures vary from Rs 6,000 to 8,000 crores.

This is clearly not enough for the sector, because the NGO sector is quite large.

We at HelpAge not rely on corporates but on individuals to donate as 70% of our 30 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

income comes from individuals.

Sonia Shrivastava, Head, Vodafone Foundation: A lot of times we hear about money that goes from companies as a CSR contribution. My humble submission is that it is not about the money. If you look at even one large government scheme and examine the contribution, it is nothing. However, if you look at the skills, competencies and expertise that companies can bring to the table, that can work very significantly to move CSR and the sustainability agenda to its purpose.

And that is recognition that NGOs should ideally have it increasingly more and more.

We work in several areas but our goal is to use mobile technology to positively transform around 50 million lives by 2020. So we work at that level of scale using our core competence which is the understanding and the use of technology.

And we bring that to address the critical challenges in the development sector. So one of the projects that we are working down south is to help micro businesses enhance their skills to manage their own enterprise and using mobile technology access markets beyond their villages. The goal for that over a 3 year period is to increase their incremental income by Rs. 250 crores.

Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation: What needs to be understood is that innovation cannot be just disruptive but can be incremental also. We are running our NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum which is in its 10th year. It actually identifies early adopters of technology, how technology can be leveraged for the good of the society and how technology can be used to create large scalable models. The need is to scale them up and make them models which are sustainable across India. The corporates who work on the Innovation Forum identify these people, put through a process of selection and then they are given an award. Most importantly we handhold them for 1 year in which we understand actually what and where is the gap, we give them access to markets, technology to make them a scalable model.

Pramel Kumar Gupta, CEO, Vrutti: Vrutti works in growth and prosperity of the farmers where we are developing a

model to increase income by 3-fold. The government of India is already targeting to double the income by 2020 but our intent is sustainable economic growth of the farmers. If you see 91% of 13.6 crore farmers, their expenditure is more than 20-30% but their earning is still very meagre. This model in the current ecosystem is encouraging lot of farm produce companies and we are trying to build to build this eco-system with the help from corporates like Azim Premji, Godrej, Edelweiss Foundation, Mindtree and so on. We have different relationship with the corporates, besides receiving grants we are also given managerial support from them. And corporates are coming forward to support us to nurture the strategies and approaches for running a successful campaign.

Saurabh Adeeb, Head, Corporate & Partner Engagement, The Nudge Foundation: The reason of our organization’s existence is to alleviate poverty sustainably and scalable manner.

There is an economic sustainability aspect to it but it will not lead to the kind of results and impact we are hoping to achieve. We look at sustainability from a model perspective to go beyond that.

Hence our sustainability and definition of sustainability goes to an extent where poverty can be alleviated. Corporates and we all should be looking into a holistic view of sustainability in terms of societal and environmental sustainability.

Dr Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM: Since we are talking about innovation, it is these NGOs who are really start-ups that will tomorrow become 3 years old, become eligible for corporate funding and many of them will come to the real marketplace where they would be tested whether their business model is viable or not. Sustainability will come from the innovation itself – how strong is it and how much we can scale up the models. CSR is slowly evolving. If while writing the law, we had not brought the civil society into it, we would not have seen this evolution.

Our’s is the only law in the universe which tries to bring corporate money and civil society grass-root expertise together.

This symbiotic relationship will contribute

COVER STORY to national development. This has never been attempted anywhere in the history of CSR. Our’s is the only unique experiment of this kind. As you see three years of CSR rolling forward, you see so much positive change. And that’s what brings vibrancy into CSR. Let’s understand 2 or 3 things here – CSR is not the panacea for our development problems, but it is a contributing element to complement and supplement what the government is doing.

The basic removal of poverty, contribution to development is the job of the elected government. In December 2015, the top 1,000 companies has done 6,887 crores of CSR, while December 2016, those to companies had done 9,012 crores.

31st of March, 2016 we crossed 12,000 crores, while 31st of March this year we are expecting to cross 14,000 crores. The corporate sector was initially taken aback by the new law and I don’t in any way want

to negate that. Any new law for people to accept, internalize or revise their strategies takes time. So the first year of 2014-15 was experimental in nature. But year 2016-17 and now 2017-18 is seeing the maturing of CSR. And as we see and behold that we take a lot of the experiences that are coming in on to our space. Every foundation need not be funded only by corporates. There are many individuals who are ready to give funds, so why should we shut that tap off. Before the law was passed, many NGOs were funded by the government departments and that funding has not dried up either.

The heart and the soul of CSR law is helping the poor, the marginalized and the deprived. Before writing the law, we hastily included a few things into it, care for elderly, rural sports, culture, monuments, all these had not been there earlier. But we triggered all of them because we came into

that space. About disaster management what we have done in the subsequent corporate affairs ruling is that if you break up disaster management into several individual points like shelter or housing where earthquake prevention homes for the poor, rebuilding damaged schools, you will see that all of these points are included in Schedule 7 of CSR law.

Today the law has opened up spaces for us. The 20,000 crores will come in the market in a year or two. The rural department ministry has a budget of 1 lakh crores every year. All the 10,500 big, fat corporates contributing 2% of their CSR end up with 20,000 crores which is just onefifth of one ministry of the government of India. So it is not a big sum. The idea is not to replace government initiatives but it is to use those 20,000 crores so well to spawn more and more projects.

Will Corporate Innovations Make CSR Sustainable?

Anuj Agarwal, Founder, Computer Society of India, Noida Chapter: We had been at the forefront of spreading digital information and digital training to the people. We have found that still at the village level the digital literacy is veryvery low but the interest of the people is definitely there. Most of the digital literacy program so far had been focused in the urban areas, so our expectations from everyone who are working in this area and the corporate that want to contribute, to contribute to those societies, those NGO’s who are really on the ground and

focusing on the rural areas because 70% of the our population is still there in the rural areas. In this new digital initiative of the government, cyber crime and the crime against people who are unaware is increasing by many faults. So the digital information awareness to the rural folks is our focus and we would look forward that everybody else is there to help and contribute into that.

Prerna Mehrotra, Partnership Officer, Private Sector Engagement, UNICEF India: We encourage businesses to channelize their efforts for

the welfare of communities and specially the children, because they are one of the most vulnerable in the community.

A joint initiative between UNICEF, the United Nations Global Compact and Save the Children has resulted in a landmark set of 10 Children’s Rights and Business Principles to guide companies on the full range of actions they can take to respect and support children’s rights in the workplace, the marketplace and the community. This is a frame work that helps us identify the impact of businesses on the lives of children, whether it’s at the work place, www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 31

COVER STORY

SPO INDIA EMERGING NGO AWARD 2017

Dr. Moumita Ghosh Bhattacharya, Chief Functionary, Aaradhya Foundation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Prof. Alaka Sarma, Founder & Executive Director, Akshar Foundation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Purnota Dutta Bahl, Founder & CEO, Cuddles Foundation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Vineet Kumar, Founder & President, Cyber Peace Foundation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Divya Prakash, Trustee, Donate An Hour receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

32 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

SPO INDIA EMERGING NGO AWARD 2017

Mrutyunjay Mishra, Director, Janwaar Castle Community Organisation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Mohammed Shahnawaz, COO, Khushi Baby receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Saurabh Adeeb, Head, Corporate & Partner Engagement, The Nudge Foundation receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Sangeeta Verma, Managing Trustee, Unnayan Foundation Trust receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

Jodie Underhill, Co-founder & Chief Outreach Officer, Waste Warriors receiving SPO India Emerging NGO Award 2017 from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 33

COVER STORY market place or within the community and support with business actions that can help to further protect and support children’s right. The whole premise of this framework is for businesses to not look at CSR corporate social responsibility or business responsibility as the liability but go beyond that and understand the impact that they have on communities. When we specifically talk about children they not just consumer for business products, they are a part of the community in which businesses operate.

Mohammed Shahnawaz, Chief Operating Officer, Khushi Baby: Khusi Baby is one of the not for profit organization and we are working in the m-health innovation area. As the recent data shows that 1.5 million children die because of unpreventable diseases, and over 200 in 1 lakh mothers die in India because of delivery related complications.

We started a classroom project at Delhi University 3 year back and right now we are working in the Udaipur district in five blocks. We are tracking 4000+ mothers and children with these complications and we are aiming to track 33,000 by end of this year. This works on the NFC principle (near field communication principle) and with this we are doing away with the paper waste record keeping that is very tough to refer. The govt. Health workers collect this quantitical maternal health rate on the table, on a biometric tablet, a personalised biometric identification based record.

We are not only decentralising the data collection but we are also focusing on the decentralised decision making. So we are working on how a govt. grass root health worker can collect data and can make decision based on these data. This doesn’t require any connectivity in rural areas as we all know that rural internet penetration is just less than 25%. And when this data is synced to the cloud district level officials and the block level health officials, they can make decision on those data. We have been supported by the UNICEF for this innovation.

Tushara Shankar, Head-CSR, United Breweries: I genuinely believe that corporate innovation can only happen when CSR is looked at as a shared value proposition in a corporate. It is only done as an exercise that is excluded from the business, which doesn’t really make sense because why should a corporate innovate.

34 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

It becomes a compliance only exercise with lots of corporate and they want to get rid of the money. While if you look at it as a shared value proposition you want to derive benefit from each penny that you have spent. That’s what corporate mindset is usually. You want to make the best of your money. So we work in the water conservation space, we are in the water intensive industry and this is beyond central ground water authority guidelines.

And while water positivity, water neutrality can also be aimed at by rejuvenating local water bodies right next to manufacturing units, but we have taken an approach of looking at the entire watershed because then the community is interested in it. It doesn’t benefit just 20 odd number of people, but it benefits a large community and when people see the benefits it stays in the long run.

Hitesh Sharma, National Manager CSR & Environment, Operations, RICOH: Ricoh is a global technology company headquartered in Japan which makes products that transform the way people work. I would like to bring in the aspect of integration; I think sustainability lies in ensuring that CSR is not seen as beyond business. Rather the innovation lies in seeing it as a mechanism to business beyond the usual. The moment this understanding comes in, I think that’s what makes the entire intervention much more sustainable, at the same time you don’t have to innovate. Innovation happens because then it’s a part and parcel of the way you do work or the way you actually try for. When a business produces goods, unwanted unavoidable products too get produced. So I think the innovation and the integration lies in identifying and recognizing those bad products and being able to mitigate those products. For mitigation you need to have a strong value leadership right. So concepts of your ethics, integrity values are actually playing a role there. The second important thing is how you eliminate the bad, how you reduce it and how do you create shared value reducing those bad.

You are actually then creating a sustainable society and an environment. The Third important thing - how do you ensure or how do you transform your bad products become the next set of goods. That is true value creation and actually the value proportion and ensuring there is a circular economy at play. So this is what is required

from the corporate perspective in trying to build this particular understanding across all the three levels of intervention.

Lalit Kumar, Senior Vice President, Sulabh International: Corporate creativity or innovations can make business sustainable or that can make communities sustainable, communities’ livelihood sustainable but for making CSR sustainable, I mean CSR has been in this country from the Rig Vedic time “Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhae” but a lot of things are happening in the last two years. For making CSR sustainable I think leadership is very important in any corporate house, impact, implementation and besides the hardware and software, hardware should be there and then their CSR program will be sustainable.

Deepak Maheshwari, Director – Government Affairs, India & ASEAN region, Symantec: After the recent wan cry cyber attack 13 days back I don’t think I need to deliver the need for cyber security.

But the fact is there are still lots to be done. In July 2013 the country announced the nation’s cyber security policy and one of the policies was that we need 5 lakh cyber security professionals who will be certified by 2018. A couple of years back we were looking at the number and as per the parliamentary committee report we looked at that the total number of cyber security professionals in the country as per the ministry of electronics and IT, it was just about 65,000 or so. That was the issue which I am talking about two years back. So then we worked with NASSCOM and partnered on creating cyber security professionals. What we did was we supported development of curriculum of 5 different job rolls and teachers training and beyond that we also instituted scholarships for 1000 students along with Nasscom Foundation for that. There after we also worked with NASSCOM Foundation to develop another course, which is a baseline cyber security fundamental course which is not just about basic cyber hygiene or awareness but going beyond that. Now these courses are ready and are currently being rolled out in different institutions.

But one of the important things that we have observed in this whole exercises is that no single company or no single country can do it all alone. So even when NASSCOM did this whole thing with our support, if constituted a board that had

SPO INDIA csr LEADERSHIP AWARD 2017 (CPSE)

D. K. Sood, Executive Director (CSR/R&R), NTPC receiving SPO India CSR Leadership Award 2017 (CPSE) from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

S. K. Bhagat, P.S. to CMD, Central Coalfields Ltd. receiving SPO India CSR Leadership Award 2017 (CPSE) from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

C.P. Bhatia, GM (F&A)/CSR, Corporate Office, REC receiving SPO India CSR Leadership Award 2017 (CPSE) from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL

S. K. Bhagat, P.S. to CMD, Central Coalfields Ltd. receiving SPO India CSR Leadership Award 2017 (CPSE) from Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee, Senior Director, IILM and S. Mukherjee, ED (HR & CSR), IOCL on behalf of South Eastern Coalfields Ltd.

Happy Horizons Trust stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Agape Foundation stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 35

COVER STORY representatives of many other companies as well as from the academia, only then we could do it all together.

P. K. Joseph, Program Director, DLF Foundation: Now when we talk about sustainability of our CSR program, we are derived from certain fundamental beliefs that we have. First of all we as a developer believe that we have certain unique assets and capabilities that can be put to use to address some of the development challenges, be it in education, skill development, sanitation, healthcare or bio diversity. Secondly we also believe that as a company we need to play a very indispensable role along with the government, the local civil society organizations like the RWAs the NGOs, the education system, the media and the local business too. When we look at the assets that we have as a developer, like various malls that we have, the huge office complexes that we have or the residential colonies that we have, we felt that we need to also use these recourses in a very effective manner from a sustainability point of view. We did a stakeholder mapping before we designed our CSR program, we also mapped the CSR space that we want to create. Some of the most critical issues that came up were in the area of education and skill development. One thing when we develop a township or a city, often the plans forget about a major or critical portion of our society, that is the people who are the stakeholders of the city like the maids, the drivers, the security guards, the peons, the lift operators, gardeners, we do not create space in terms of healthcare, education. So we launched our program called the Integrated Nurturing Talent Program. This is a very unique model that we created. If you look into the needs and the requirements of every child, whether it is bright or average or low performing children, there is a roadmap for each one of them. What we did was that we created a fee less school at a primary level at various community sites and the educational sites that we have. We work with the local NGOs to set up these primary schools for the low income and the middle low income group. We run 3 such schools up to higher secondary level. While we are doing that we found there are many children who are highly talented but they lack opportunities to realise their dreams. We picked up around 1200 such children and transferred them 36 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

from their existing government schools or the local schools that we have to high-end public schools and private schools and that we financed their education and provided them with the complete range of coaching and training.

Amandeep Singh, Chief G.M., Corporate Communications, Indraprastha Gas Ltd.: Even before the companies act was enacted and notified in 2014, many of the activities were actually aimed at providing general social good, the common good which we are talking about. But coming very specifically to the innovation part, I think for the entire corporate landscape we have come a long way. There used to be a term called green washing which used to be used in 1980’s by the environmentalists that the companies are trying to white wash their sins by doing CSR. This is entirely a transformative CSR which we are seeing today. We can call it CSR 2.0 wherein the boards are encouraging the corporate, the entire management and the manpower to become very proactive into it. At the same time what we also see is that CSR as a social sector has not just become a domain of social sector professionals.

We have people from various domains who are contributing to the innovation. We have people from marketing background, people from finance, and people from legal background who are actually undertaking CSR projects in the corporate and that is actually bringing lots of innovation to the table and that is driving the innovation.

Aarti Chandna, Vice President, Centum Foundation: When I was trying to co-relate the relation between innovation and CSR, I remembered one very catchy phrase which I read - CSR is doing about the right things and innovation is about doing things right. I think it reallyreally summed up everything. While a corporate can do a lot of innovation in their business processes to be a more responsible corporate social responsible partner I would speak from a perspective of an NGO or as an implementation partner. There are many case studies like the case study where a company spends a millions of dollars to redefine their business processes to do things right. I would only talk about small transactions.

We train people with disabilities and the first disability which we have picked up is deaf. While we train the deaf and our deaf comes with a certain education level,

when we train them on a program for 2-3 months, we realised that input of that kind is also not enough for them to have a respectable livelihood. While we can get them jobs, would they grow up the ladder like everybody else, probably not. Why, because their education level is very- very low. So what can we do, what innovation can we do along with the corporate to make a difference. The innovation which we are suggesting to the corporate is that lets go to the school level and work on the education of the deaf individuals when they are in class 1 and above, so that by the time they come out of schools, they have qualities like they understand what deaf empowerment is, what the deaf identity is and they have a better educational background than what they have today.

Tushar Sud, Director Partnerships CSR & Philanthropy, Swades Foundation: We have adopted 2000 villages in Raigarh district in rural Maharashtra and we have adopted an integrated approach, which means is we go to these villages and we look at water, sanitation, health, education, and ultimately economic development that includes livelihood in agriculture and skilling as well. Now the intent there is to make these villages, make the communities self sustainable. So we go with the 5-6 year plan to engage, empower, co-execute and finally exit. I think exit is very important to make anything self sustainable.

Definitely CSR corporate funding does help but we consider all our donors as our partners, because they are equally in the streamlining processes, systems, building capacities of both communities as well as the NGO partners. We went in these villages thinking we need to educate the girl child, but what we realised is education is not the problem. The villages want to send their girls to school but who is going to fetch the water, the govt. The ladies of the houses including the girls need to spend 2-3 hours fetching just 100 litres of water to meet daily requirement.

So we wanted to solve the problem of water. We looked at rain water harvesting for drinking water in every home, we looked at constructing toilets in every households. We are now looking at rain water harvesting for agriculture, so that the farmers can do the second crop and not just rely on paddy during the monsoon season.

EarthWatch India stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

The Toy Bank stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Philanthrope stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Nasscom Foundation stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Praani stall at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Lamp lighting by dignitaries at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

A view of audience at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017 A view of audience at SPO India CSR Summit & Awards 2017

Pravin Prashant and Samrita Baruah pravin@spoindia.org samrita@spoindia.org www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 37

interview

“NBCC is planning to purchase a few construction companies...”

Anoop Kumar Mittal, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC) speaks to SPO India about the recent investments made into, both CSR and construction related projects and its presence in the country and in international markets and we may increase this amount also.

But we want to create a different kind of environment there; we want to preserve, conserve the property. As well as we want to make this a happening tourist place.

We are planning to invest a minimum of 10cr rupees in CSR.

Can you tell us about the total investment NBCC has got on date?

You see you take like this- it’s not investment, but we call this as our order book. The total order book as on date is about 80,000 cr rupees. So last financial year, almost 40,000cr rupees orders we got in 2016-17. This year’s target for 2017-18 is about 25,000cr rupees.

What kind of business opportunities in terms of investments you see across the country, when the smart cities are a concern and NBCC is at the forefront in investment. So can you give some light on investment of smart cities?

In smart cities there are 2-3 components. Of course one is IT related infrastructure development; another is basic infrastructure like sewage schemes, water supplies, road network. And for all this, the city government and municipal corporations need money. And for that government is not funding, except 100cr rupees or 200cr rupees. So what these cities are proposing that, they want to utilise their surplus land for generating the money, like we are doing in Kidwai Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Naroji Nagar. They want to generate money on that model. So there we see lots of opportunity. So it’s very difficult to quantify that right now, but opportunities are beyond imagination.

Apart from Delhi which are the other states you have got your footprint?

We are present in all the states. Of course Delhi being the capital, maximum presence is visible here. Otherwise we are equally spread everywhere. We have works in south also - Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Cochin, Hyderabad, and Vishakhapatnam; in east we have huge presence right from 38 | May 2017 www.spoindia.org

Any new initiative you want to bring in the green field building?

West Bengal to Jharkhand and Bihar. And particularly north-east we have presence in all 7-8 states. Of course in Maharashtra, we have the irrigation project in Nagpur; we have recently bagged projects in Mumbai, Pune, Gujarat and so on. So we are equally spread.

We have decided that all our buildings now will be minimum of rating 4, gold leaf plated and particularly I would like to mention about the Pragati Maidan redevelopment which is a convention and an exhibition centre with 7000 capacity.

The construction will happen on 100 acres of land which will be totally a green project, with zero waste and 100% recycled material.

What is the business forecast for coming year?

international

For 2017-18, minimum 25,000cr rupees of business is what we sim at.

Presently we are there in 5 countries.

We are working on the Supreme Court building in Mauritius, the housing scheme for Mauritius government. We are also doing 2 projects in Maldives and another in Turkey, Botswana and recently we have opened office in Oman also.

Anything you want to talk on the smart city vision?

What about presence?

your

You have invested 8.7cr in CSR in 2015-16. So what is the investment in 2016-17?

The minimum investment would be 3% of our profits, which is about 10cr rupees. On CSR, one thing I would like to highlight apart from the normal work that we are doing. This year we have adopted Purana Qila in Delhi. So we have adopted this entire heritage property. Initially we have committed 15cr rupees investment

The best example of a smart city is the development of the Moti Bagh colony.

In true sense it’s not a city but a smart township. On a similar model, we are redeveloping all other properties. Recently we have acquired one more public sector company - Hindustan Steel Works, it’s a company which was under ministry of steel and now is a part of NBCC. We are trying to purchase a few more construction companies that the government is offering us. In next six months we will buy 1 or 2 more public sector companies.

The objective behind this to consolidate construction related public sector companies under the umbrella of NBCC.

www.spoindia.org May 2017 | 39

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