As Mahatma Gandhi once said: ?Action expresses priorities.? Not many would know what National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), the largest thermal power generator in India, does beyond contributing 27% of the country?s power generation. But with the conviction that ?with great power comes greater responsibility,? NTPC is trying to reach out to the 7.8 crore households in India that are yet to be electrified. Not an easy task by any means, considering that rural electrification by grid supply is uneconomical and losses associated with transmission and distribution a serious concern. The viability factor therefore comes in the form of distributed generation projects based on renewable energy resources. The Village Energy Committee (VEC) operates and maintains the plant. Jemara in Chattisgarh and Bhaogarh in Rajasthan now bank on biomass gasifier, Jaraha-Chetwa in Uttar Pradesh runs on solar photo-voltaic cells.
?Each project requires a one-time grant in capital cost. The technical support is taken care of by NTPC. We are also planning to promote fuel cells, hydrogen and wind power for these projects,? says R C Shrivastav. The director (HR) has spent close to two decades in streamlining NTPC?s CSR initiatives. ?Development cannot be isolated. We need to identify ourselves with society, to whatever extent we can. The NTPC Foundation is doing a lot of other community work as well.? Nearly 0.5% of the power giant?s profits are routed to the Foundation for plantation drives, rehabilitation of project-affected people, natural calamity funds and for creating self-employment opportunities for the physically challenged.
Further east, Oil India Ltd is working on the development of nearly 1400 villages of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. ?Islands of prosperity cannot survive in a sea of poverty. Therefore, unless companies give back to the land and people from which it has taken so much, unless it looks beyond business and enables disadvantaged communities to fend for themselves, act as a catalyst of socio-economic development issues, lop-sided development would continue to haunt them. Global industrial history and statistics prove that the companies which survived the test of times are those which never compromised on issues of ethics and corporate social responsibility,? reasons Ashok Anand, Group General Manager (HR&A). Clearly, for such governance to be sustainable, it is imperative that business interests serve as the foundation for social responsibility.
So, despite overwhelming concern to find more oil, OIL?s relatively modest CSR budget of Rs 20 lakh in the early eighties went up to 0.75% of its net profit. In the last fiscal, it spent around Rs 20 crore on the same and even did a social audit of its CSR activities. Their latest initiative is Project Rupantar. OIL, along with the State Institute of Rural Development has formed nearly 2,000 self-help groups to address the educated unemployment. It primarily focuses on agro-based industries. Take for instance diversification in handloom products like eri and muga (world famous golden silk of Assam), pig breeding, duck rearing, sericulture, organic farming etc.
Another oil giant too is walking the line. Indian Oil Corp Ltd has set aside a fixed portion of its profits for the same. It is worthy of mention that they have adopted Shob Mathai, a Harijan basti with a population of 1,000 near Allahabad, for complete development. In fact nearly one-fourth of its community development funds are spent on the welfare of scheduled caste and schedule tribes. ?The local gram panchayats, district administration, NGOs and social workers are involved wherever necessary. Potable water and medicare account for the maximum of our community development budget,? says Sarthak Behuria, chairman, IOC. It would be difficult to deny that IOC is best known for its sports scholarship! Ace badminton player Aparna Popat, P Srinath (tennis) and cricketer Wasim Jaffer are just few of the several sports stars on Indian Oil rolls. There?s more ? the Indian Oil Foundation has also decided to adopt at least one heritage site in every state and union territory.
Lets not forget the ?little bit of steel in everyone?s life.? Fortunately the ?little bit? is growing remarkably. Steel Authority of India Ltd doubled its CSR expenditure in the last fiscal. For the current financial year, the CSR budget has been earmarked as 2% of budgeted distributable surplus ? which works to almost Rs 100 crore a year. It is SAIL?s vision to be a ?respected world-class corporation and leader in Indian steel business in quality, productivity, profitability and customer satisfaction,? that propelled it to ?conduct business in ways that produce social, environmental and economic benefits to the communities in which it operates,? says RK Singhal, DGM, corporate affairs. The strategy appears to have paid off well. ?SAIL recently bagged the Businessworld-FICCI-SEDF Corporate Social Responsibility Award ? the first time that a PSU bagged the prestigious award, instituted in 1999,? says Singhal proudly.
Apart from adopting nearly 79 villages in eight states, SAIL has set up several sports academies. CSR activities in the fields of education, access to drinking water, healthcare, roads, income generation, women?s empowerment, tribal welfare, afforestation, etc. too exist.
A cursory glance at the CSR initiatives of PSUs might prompt one to question, ?if these actually should qualify as CSR?? Must health and education not be the primary responsibility of these corporate giants ? ?the least they must do irrespective?? Shefali Chaturvedi, director and head ? Social Development Initiatives, Confederation of Indian Industry, has an explanation: ?By and large the CSR initiatives in India are at a very nascent stage. So far CSR is taken to be synonymous with community work. There is a need to go beyond what the company is already doing as philanthropy and look at it as part of your business.? Point well taken.