“LONG-TERM VISION IS A MUST”

DINESH AGARWAL is former general manager and head of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) department at NTPC.He was the drafting member of Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ national guidelines on responsible business conduct. He speaks to on what improvements can be brought about in the sector

What are the biggest achievements and challenges of CSR?

The biggest achievement is that CSR has created a level playing field among companies.The provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, has ensured that CSR activities involve the board of the company.This guarantees that even the senior-most company official has a clear understanding on CSR.The biggest challenge is that CSR is not fully integrated into the corporate philosophy yet. It is still seen as additional activities that focus on expenditure and not on the projects undertaken.

Why has CSR expenditure been more on human development and social welfare schemes?

There are many companies that want quick mileage from CSR projects.This is possible by focusing on human development and social welfare.The companies also use these CSR investments to buy peace from the project-affected people. The idea of CSR is that companies should have a clear reason for undertaking a particular project, based on their core competencies, but that is rarely done.

There should be long-term vision on CSR projects based on principles such as sustainable development. But companies don’t have it.And,as long as they don’t have a vision,they will continue to have ad-hoc approach towards CSR.

However, if an aspirational district is near the area of operation of a company, then it can be incorporated in CSR activities using a long-term plan for the district.

with `653.19 crore. While Manipur spent `24.78 crore and Meghalaya `24.11, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram spent as low as `5.88 crore, `3.35 crore and `2.41 crore respectively. On the other hand, Maharashtra spent a huge `8,468.28 crore during the period. Subramaniam says, “There is not enough corporate presence in these states. This could be a reason for the poor expenditure here. It is also possible that corporates are unwilling to invest here because some areas are inacces-sible and lack strongimplementation agencies,” she says.

What’s more, five years after the Act was enforced, 70 per cent of the companies still do not have a strategy to implement CSR activities. As per the law, companies should set up board level committees, which draw plans for the effective implementation of their projects. According to the IICA study, if a firm has a CSR policy and committee in place, but does not have an implementation strategy, supports the conclusion that companies are more focused on complying with the law and spending CSR funds rather than making a serious initiative. Such a behaviour, says the study, could be due to lack of capacity or experience in the development sector.

CSR has a huge potential to improve the lives of a large number of people in the country. It’s `13,624 crore corpus can bring change in a wide variety of sectors. Therefore, it is crucial that companies do not relegate it as a perfunctory exercise, but make a meaningful contribution to society.