Corporate Social Responsibility in India - Said Business School

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cultural heritage. The concept of “trusteeship” asserts the right of the capitalist to accumulate and maintain wealth and to use it to benefit society (Narayan 1966). Researchers have established connections between CSR and trusteeship (Renold 1994; Masani 1956; Pachauri 2004). Gandhi’s view of the ownership of capital was one of trusteeship, motivated by the belief that essentially society was providing capitalists with an opportunity to manage resources which need to be managed on behalf of society in general. As the tradition suggests, almost every large corporation involved in the Indian market today is engaged in some form of social initiative in India although this is not well documented. CSR penetration in India is relatively high with over 80 percent corporations administering some kind of corporate social responsibility program; this exceeds some of India’s counterparts in Asia, especially Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines that are economically more prosperous than India. (Chambers et al 2003). Keep a low profile Despite the high penetration, CSR activities of Indian businesses are not well recognized 3 at the global level. Diverse stakeholders in India interviewed have pointed out that Indian companies' CSR programs are significantly underestimated. An immediate explanation would be that contemporary CSR international rankings based on the continued emphasis on the corporate bottom line fall short to assess CSR performance of Indian firms as they address social problems like poverty, health, and education. Another reason might be Indians themselves. They believe it is not appropriate to talk about the good deeds that they are doing. The rule of 'Do not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing' is predominantly being applied to the case of CSR. Only 17 percent of the companies surveyed in India had a written CSR policy while more than 80 percent of the surveyed companies engage in CSR programs (Partners in Change 2005). �� PART II: WHY CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY? Many companies in India start CSR programs as a response to dissatisfaction with the prevailing social order and an urge
to improve it. It is often the case that CSR programs emerge out of the founders' desires to create alternatives which challenge existing models, and their corporate practices are shaped by their underlying deontological views about social reality. The motivation for socially responsible activities of companies often comes from the leadership and orientation of top management (Sood and Arora 2006). Alternatives to existing order can be put into three categories: alternatives to the state, alternative community and alternatives to the market.(Schwabenland 2006) In India, alternatives to the state and alternative community seem to be prevailing, while market alternatives are less noticeable. 1) Alternatives to the state There has been a global trend toward greater involvement of the private sector in the division of responsibility between the state and the private sector for the delivery of public goods and services. The Indian government faces many challenges in addressing the immense problem of poverty in the country. The public sector has partnered with the private sector in India for sometime now. The real shift, however, took place in the 1990s when India 4 liberalized its economy, an event brought about by a prolonged national financial crisis. The private sector was allowed to operate in many areas that had been previously reserved for the public sector, and was given more opportunities to compete in more segments of the economy (GBC 2007). The performance and activities of the public sector on welfare has not always escaped criticisms from industrialists in India. Industry leaders in India have repeatedly blamed the government’s poor performance in education for the dearth of qualified candidates and the ‘poor quality’ of most engineering graduates, and argued that steps should be taken to make young people from rural areas and lower castes more competitive in the job market, especially by improving the quality of school education. The IT industry has taken steps to upgrade and re-orient engineering education to better suit its needs in the form of corporate social responsibility. At the CII National Summit on CSR 2007 Mr Venu Srinivasan, Chairman, in his address said that the benefits of the Government’s welfare schemes did not always reach the target groups. Industrial experience could
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Corporate Social Responsibility in India - Said Business School

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