CSR: Government Initiatives to Empower Rural Youth

Some of the most critical developmental goals that governments strive to achieve are providing employment, securing livelihoods and improving incomes of the people. Indian economy has an advantage in the form of its favorable demographic composition. With 877 million working-age people, India is the largest young nation in the world. According to IMF, India can improve up to 2% annual growth rate, if the demographic dividend is harnessed appropriately. However, the growth potential relies heavily on skilling and employability of the youth

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CSR: Rise in India’s Carbon Emissions

India has been responsible for 2,299 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This is a significant rise of 4.8% as compared to the previous year. The report has stated that India’s emissions growth this year was higher than that of the US and China, who are the biggest emitters in the world. The rise in carbon emissions has been accounted to the increase in coal consumption

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CSR: Government Initiatives to Bring Sustainability in India’s Agriculture

India is predominantly an agrarian country. Agriculture employs almost half of the country’s workforce. It is also responsible for providing livelihood to the majority of the country’s population. However, with the growing demand for food, the agriculture sector of the country is caught between providing food at affordable prices and generating the necessary income to meet the basic standard of living for the majority of the population. About 70% of the arable land in India is drought prone, 12% is flood prone and 8% is cyclone prone

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CSR reforms as a nursery for empathetic learning and innovations

CSR reforms for augmenting inclusive innovation movement are overdue. So far, a very few Corporations (foundations apart) have really devoted their Corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment strategy towards augmenting innovations. If we exclude, the contributions of Public Sector Corporations towards CSR, the total contribution for CSR is very low by the rest of the thousands of the corporations. Why should Companies pay attention to CSR which is social obligation imposed by the government but for more important strategic reason. One of the important reasons is that by engaging with socially disadvantaged regions, the Corporations can learn to be empathetic

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Who’s afraid of CSR?

Corporates can create value for themselves and yet uphold the spirit of the law, of giving back to society With the advent of the new CSR law in India, there have been several discussions on its provisions, lack of specificity and pros/cons. Many feel this would turn out to be merely an accounting exercise, with companies no longer willing to look at innovative solutions for societal good. Some 8,000 companies come under the purview of the Act, pooling an estimated value of more than $100 billion for CSR activities alone. With the Centre and States focusing on nurturing an ecosystem for organisations to flourish, there are several opportunities for businesses to gain from CSR, within the purview of the law as it stands today. An analysis of the CSR activities of the top 300 firms reveals that while 34 per cent of them implement the law through their own foundations, another 30 per cent collaborate with NGOs and other institutions

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