CSR Activities

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR):

Definitions:

Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.

Applicability:

Date: w.e.f 1st April 2014

• Section 135(1) of Company Act 2013 mandates the CSR expenditure for the following companies– Every company having

            a) net worth of Rs.500 crore,

            b) turnover of Rs.1000 crore

            c) or net profit of Rs.5.00 crore

• Where net profit excludes income from overseas branch & divided distributed by company on which this section apply.
• If any company on which CSR provisions were applicable cease to come in above criteria for consecutive three years , they are not required to follow the provision of CSR

Activities for CSR Expenditure:

Schedule VII mandates expenditure for the following activity:

1. Eradicating hunger, poverty and malnutrition, promoting preventive health care and sanitation and making available safe drinking water,
2.  Promoting education, including special education and employment enhancing vocation skills especially among children, women, elderly, and the differently abled and livelihood enhancement projects,
3. Promoting gender equality, empowering women, setting up homes and hostels for women and orphans; setting up old age homes, daycare centres and such other facilities for senior citizens and measures for reducing inequalities faced by socially and economically backward ,
4.  ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agro forestry, conservation of natural resources and maintaining quality of soil, air and water,
5. Protection of national heritage, art and culture including restoration of buildings and sites of historical importance and works of art; setting up public libraries; promotion and development of traditional art and handicrafts,
6.  Measures for the benefit of armed forces veterans, war widows and their dependents,
7. Training to promote rural sports, nationally recognised sports, Paralympics sports and Olympic  sports,
8.  Contribution to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund or any other fund set up by the Central Government for socio-economic development and relief and welfare of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women,
9.  Contributions or funds provided to technology incubators located within academic institutions which are approved by the Central Government,
10. Rural development projects,
11.  Slum Area Development.

FAQs:

• What is CSR? - Definitions, Terminology

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is a Company's Social Responsibility.

The responsibility of an organization for the impacts of its decisions and activities on society and the environment, through transparent and ethical behavior that

• contributes to sustainable development, including health and the welfare of society;
• takes into account the expectations of stakeholders;
• is in compliance with applicable law and consistent with international norms of behavior; and
• is integrated throughout the organization and practiced in its relationships.

Note1: Activities include products, services and processes
Note2: Relationships refer to an organization's activities within its sphere of influence
Note3: Sphere of influence is the area across which an organization has the ability to affect decisions or activities, where Area can be understood in a geographical sense, as well as in a functional.
Note 4: Stakeholder is individual or group that has an interest in any activities or decisions of an organization

• Why CSR? - Key Considerations

While the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – generally used to describe businesses’ efforts to achieve sustainable outcomes by committing to good business practices and standards - is relatively new, the actual practices and related policies are not. The key roles and responsibilities are often discussed within the context of business, society and the environment.

While most businesses compete either on price, level of quality or service as their competitive advantage, non-profit organizations often use efficiency, values of service or societal benefit to generate their competitive advantage, and governments. Can your organization or direct competitors tap on additional economic, environmental or social advantages that can be used for competitive purposes, such as community support, better brand identity, reduced waste disposal costs or better employee working conditions?

Today consumers, investors, governments and even employees have become more sophisticated and more aware of good corporate behavior, or lack thereof. In this new business environment, a company's reputation has become one of its most valuable assets, and CSR has become one of the key components of corporate reputation.

• How the Government will monitor such activity towards CSR properly served to the public?

If one understands CSR as a strategically management tool, and not as philanthropy, then there is no immediate need for governments to monitor, but rather to create a supportive environment were businesses can develop CSR into their own business processes and get rewards for that, maybe not only by the customers and the employees but also by government by incentives. This would give the CSR idea a great kick, as a lot of societies are heavily relying on government’s approval or disapproval of things, rather than just doing what is good for business. It will take a while until this notion will change, so up to then, it is less a monitoring position than rather a positive incentive giver role of the government. And this positive incentive can well be that government, government agencies and government owned business implement CSR as first movers to give a good example.

• CSR activity

 Activities means, integration into the daily business of the organization. So there are no necessarily specified general CSR activities, but rather according to the organization Taylor made, so to mitigate impacts and deal with stakeholder expectations. Hope this helps as far as it can.

• What are the roles of CSR in MNCS?

The role of CSR in Multinational corporations is of course dealing with the impacts the company has on society, the environment and the economics. Only when recognizing and dealing with these impacts the MNC will be able to improve its performance and maybe find new ways to deal with things, be it technological, be it in process, be it in its supply chain etc. Most important is also to take the expectations of stakeholders into account - if the MNC does not meet the expectations it will lose its license to operate, and then we are really talking money. So, this is not a side thing one does if somebody is under challenged in his job, but core management responsibility, as it secures income of the company. Wall Mart is a good example, greening their supply chain saved them 200 Million USD in reduced transport costs, that is a lot of money, even for Wall Mart, and has nothing to do with a spleen of some tree  hugger manager at the company but is core business. Improving the financial bottom line.