Corporate Social Responsibility in India
Authors: Anna Becker, Madeline Dement and Georgia Thorne
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received increasing attention in recent years as private businesses recognise its potential to drive positive social change using targeted philanthropy. Nowhere has the practice gained more traction than in India which, in 2013, passed the Companies Act and became the first country in the world to make CSR mandatory for businesses of a certain size. The law aimed to improve the country’s poor performance on many social development metrics by capitalising on the profits accrued in its fast-growing economy (Guha, 2020). By institutionalising CSR, legislators intended to “leverage the corporate innovations and management skills” of businesses in a way that would help to solve a variety of India’s development challenges (NGOBOX & CSRBOX, 2018). The programme has been successful at raising billions of dollars for development efforts in the country, however, if India’s CSR mandate is to become a model for others around the world, certain challenges need to be addressed.