Corporate Social Responsibility: Somewhere to make a beginning

Asoke K. Laha
President & MD
Interra IT

India is more a continent than a country in terms of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, Socio-economic, multiplicity and variety. Corporates in India have their own problems and issues in plenty to keep them busy surviving in an increasingly competitive market. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) usually takes backseat unless for someone like a large group or people with deep pockets and high dreams. This article, however, tries to show why gestures to the community are valuable from a practical money-earning angle - and how.

Commercial and profit-making bodies have the right of putting emphasis on profit above all. At the same time, for stable, long-term prosperity, any organization needs to have some goals and a strategy to meet its targets. A society torn by socio-economic poverty and poverty of ideals would be myopic and lose sight of very important social and community aspects of profit making.

What is a company? And what is a profitable venture? It is simply a team which synergizes a group's interests with those of the community in which it lives, thrives and works on a daily basis. A healthy commercial body is acutely aware of the needs to harmonize its objectives and style with some aspirations and interests of the community. The clients, the vendors as well as the business associates, in fact, belong to your community and you cannot make money or earn livelihood without satisfying some of their important needs.

An SME ICT company like us, InterraIT, may not have funds or bandwidth to address community needs in the scale of Tata's or Bill Gate's Foundation / MS or Infosys. But can't we match this by our creativity, networking among friends, colleagues and peer organizations and come up with programmes to relieve stress, beautify, rebuild values and community assets and contribute to the society beyond our profit and loss interests.

CSR, the point I am trying to make, is something alive and evolving. We cannot or need not practise this as a ritual or structured exercise. The inspiration should flow from our observations and assessment of societal needs. Of course, one should have to put in some careful thought resulting in a structure of some kind in order to make it happen. At the same time, one must be aware that beaurocracy will foil it and nip it in the very bud of its existence. The idea must come naturally like we undertake some tasks to better our nucleus family. We must start CSR as part and parcel of our business and make CSR our business as well. We do not put corporate or business plans to teach our son, train a daughter, take our ailing parents to a clinic. We do all this on top of our commercial and professional tasks.

Here is a case history for you though without mentioning the specifics. 

An ICT company goes to a North-Eastern state where there is a lot of rich forest reserves and environmental assets still underappreciated to a significant degree. The manager flies from Delhi to the capital city of the state and back and keeps his nose into the business only for some time. In course of his work, informal interaction starts between him and some of the local people, and he realizes the tremendous need of education and training and of tapping huge potential for betterment of the environment and improve income and livelihood for the people.

This informal thought and discussion process leads him to explore with his management and the people of that state and then launch a low investment, non-profit activity by putting together synergic plans of fisheries, gardens of orange and pineapple and honey cultivation. These were all put together and driven by a professional from the company, with active involvement of the community people and to some extent the government agents.

The stakeholders were the people themselves, but the business of ICT by the promoter company was a direct beneficiary in terms of trust and confidence of the community. The media wrote and telecast stories on this and now the global agencies are offering help to take it to new heights.

An unknown manager in an ICT company saw the needs and the opportunities and saw beyond his routine job, thereby connecting a vision to his professional jobs. A possibility was actively explored and was converted into business for a community.

Can we look for such opportunities for CSR activities all over the country which does not ask us to be the top dollar organization and yet helps our environment and community without hurting our business interests?

We are helping our organization and the profitability to a fuller extent by pursuing these societal causes.