CSR - Citizens Social Responsibility

TiE had conducted a panel discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility last Friday at the Center for Organization Development in Hyderabad. Went over for two reasons:

- We are a team of young people with energies which can definitely be used for something good
- The main speaker was Jayprakash Narayan (JP)

So here we were at the COD and waiting to listen to people on CSR. JP was joined by Naveen Yelloji (Satyam), Narasimha Rao(Infosys/HySEA), Surana, Bipin Chandra and Satya Prasad. The introduction by Dr. Madhavi of COD was good.

CSR was looked at from various levels and thats what made this panel interesting. On one hand it was clearly three different sets of players:

a. NGO - Charity works wonders
Really appreciate the efforts of Satya Prasad through HEAL (www.heal.co.uk) and I am sure there are several other NGOs with less-charismatic leaders who are making a difference to the society by channelizing the charity from various sources to make the society a better place to live for the underprivileged, downtrodden or just-unlucky people.
All have agreed that the point is to provide self-confidence by enabling people with skills required to survive and succeed and not just give charity and create a society of dependents.

b. Corporate - CSR is great and does wonders. Corporates agree that there is an automatic responsibility on them to contribute to the better of society and do their part in bridging the digital divide (as Mr. J A Chowdhary pitched in). And it does not just begin or end with giving money to NGOs or the poor, but also educating their employees to become better citizens - and giving CSR a new meaning: Citizen Social Responsibility. Volunteering to reduce the evils of the environment around us.

c. Government/Politics - JP speaking from the larger perspective - CSR is good but not enough. Very clearly JP saw the importance of the above but has more going on in his knowledgeable brain. Charity definitely does not help anyone - he took a jab at all the foolhardy schemes of the governments and the inevitable quixotic actions in an election year. He was looking at each one of us as a citizen of the corporate and the country and urged all to take more interest in the institutions that are actually running the country. And that is the way to working on being socially responsible. His perennial question popped up here too: Do you know who is the mayor of Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata? Take interest and work on the institutions which govern our society.

And also was evident another three pronged perspective:

a. CSR as Citizen's or Individual's work
Every one of us taking up small works - adopting a child, volunteering to help authorities such as the Traffic Police or the Police or Municipal Corporation with our effort or intelligence. More importantly, like Narasimha Rao said, follow rules yourself and tell the people in our Circle of Influence/Control to follow rules.

b. CSR as the work of do-good societies
Taking a part of our salary (may be at an org level) and donating to a co-op society or NGO. Unique activities can be taken up by NGOs - farmers education, teaching at government schools, and organizing support for initiatives and raising funds, running schools etc. etc.

c. CSR as life/environment-changing initiatives: A different perspective presented by Yelloji, considering the Corporate as a Citizen in its own right and which comes up to the challenge of using its collective intellect to come up with something which will change the society/environment. Satyam's initiative of EMRI (108) is one such example. I was amazed to know that EMRI handles more calls (probably double the number) than 911 in the US.

The good thing about being in the audience is that you can absorb all the points expressed by the panelists, even if each of the panelists are stuck to their ideologies/opinions/principles. And on that scale this has been a great panel, with the audience gaining from the different perspectives. Bipin had as always done a good job managing the show.

For those who do not know about Jayprakash Narayan, I urge you to look up http://jayaprakashnarayan.blogspot.com/2005/11/little-about-me.html and also www.loksatta.org

Also, I think such institutions as COD must be encouraged by corporates. Check out www.codhyd.org