CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A COMMONER’S PERSPECTIVE

There are numerous words today that connote what most of the world knows as ‘Corporate
Social Responsibility’ or CSR: Corporate Conscience, Corporate Citizenship, and the like. This is
testament to the importance that it has garnered as businesses worldwide have progressively
expanded their scale and scope. CSR is in essence a self-regulating mechanism that is integrated
into a business model; hence the term ‘responsibility.’

This policy aims at doing all those things that are required for businesses to ensure their
support for legal, ethical, and social norms and hence is based on the philosophy that every
business must embrace responsibility for the impacts of its activities and operations on
stakeholders, communities, the environment and the entire public sphere. When businesses
focus on CSR, often they aim at the protection and promotion of public interest, regardless of
legality. Although some practices may be legal, they may not be in the interest of the people.

From my previous work experience in a port company, an example comes to mind. My

company had acquired all statutory environmental clearances to proceed with the acquisition
of land and construction of facilities, yet there was an element that silently opposed the port:
the locals. The local people worshipped the turtle as a deity, and believed that the
establishment of the port would result in substantial harm being sustained to the population of
Olive Ridley turtles that nested in the area each year, that pollution would kill them or worse,
drive them away forever. These fears were unfounded since the company had received the
necessary environmental clearances; who better than the government itself to safeguard the
existence of an endangered species of turtle. Yet the stigma remained with the people. The
company, while perfectly adhering to legal norms, realized that acceptance by the locals was as
important. It therefore, conducted a series of camps (of which I was fortunate to be a part) that
taught the local communities more about the turtle, and even distributed clay figures of the
turtle deity. As realization grew amongst the locals that the company was not some ruthless
capitalist juggernaut, we utilized this opportunity to teach them that the movement of ships
would be along a different water channel than the one the turtles frequented, and hence there
was no real risk to the turtles. The resistance turned into acceptance, all through the most
forgotten cardinal rule of human interaction: empathy! This leads us to what can be called the
core of CSR: the sustenance and promotion of the triple bottom line: profit, people, and the
planet.

There are no rigid ways in which CSR initiatives are undertaken. The triple bottom line is the
inspiration, and its validation is a mere function of the imagination of businesses. The use of
sustainable development measures such as the use of renewable sources of energy is possibly
the most quoted component of CSR. However, other initiatives such as community work and
Human Resource-aided CSR schemes such as payroll giving (where employees can reduce their
tax liability through donations to registered charities) are undertaken. My company for instance
decided to conduct youth camps, where local people were invited to the state capital for a
three day residential program at one location. The company funded program comprised
discussions on how the community could work together for its own betterment, as well as
informal evening get-togethers where the locals came together to put up a play or a dance
routine, and then were taught the merit of staying self-motivated and happy through their
lives. Three such camps, I believe, yielded us more satisfaction than the revenue from the port
ever could. CSR can thus improve the perception of the company and endear it to its own
people: its employees. Indeed, the feeling of contentedness and belonging that arises from the
fact that the community appreciates that you did your bit for them is like no other feeling.

Corporate Social Responsibility in most instances is not a right that the public enjoys over
businesses. There are norms regulating the use of the resources of a company such as financial
and accounting compliance, legal requirements with regard to HR, and a host of others. But
when an individual cannot be molded to be responsible, the question of a business being
directed to be socially responsible virtually does not arise. Several major businesses and brands
such as The Body Shop are founded on ethical values. But when we think of whether legal
regulations required them to conform to ethical norms, we do know that they did not.

While the CSR mechanism has its own critics who argue that such initiatives distract businesses
from their fundamental objective of being economically profitable, I understand, with due
respect to them, that the goal of social profitability is something that is infinitely more
important. It is said that the world holds enough for every man’s need, but not for every man’s
greed. And as businesses worldwide fly into the future at bewildering speed, it is important that
they sensitize themselves to just that thought.