Transcript

It is not CSR but CR | Vinita Bali | TEDxNMIMSBangalore

you know I'm here really to talk about something that we've read about a lot something that seems as though it is new but actually it should not be and it's a topic that concerns not just the corporates but it should concern all of us I'm talking about CSR which we know as corporate social responsibility we either need to call it collective social responsibility or simply corporate responsibility so what do we mean when we say corporate social responsibility you know what is social about corporate responsibility my premise for all of you who come from the corporate world who aspire to be in the corporate world who are in some way you know informed citizens of this country when we talk about corporate social responsibility in a sense we are letting business get away from its everyday responsibilities because if businesses are to work in a manner which is responsible which is responsible to employees responsible to all stakeholders responsible to the environment responsible to the communities we live in there will be no need to call it's social responsibility to my mind it is simply corporate responsibility take some things that all of us not just in Bangalore but everywhere in this country are dealing with on an everyday basis and that is garbage on our streets driving here we've seen garbage and we see garbage everywhere now there is no reason for garbage to be on our streets if I'm a corporate and I'll give you a specific example take the city of Bangalore Bangalore and a half to four thousand tons of garbage every day the bulk generators which are corporates Hospital schools academic institutions hotels restaurants etc account for 70% of that garbage we know how to reduce recycle and reuse garbage and yet we seem to believe that it is someone else's responsibility to deal with my garbage what if we created a law and a lot of these have already been stipulated we have judgments and the High Court to say that segregation is essential but I think we have to step back and say how many of us are actually doing our individual social responsibility which then adds up to collective social responsibility and if we do that we will not require corporate social responsibility it will simply be corporate responsibility so what if can we imagine a situation where 70% of the garbage that is generated by the bulk generators is dealt with at the place where it is generated and I'm not talking some theory I am talking practice we did it we won many awards for doing it and it is possible the solutions to reducing reusing and recycling garbage are known we have more solutions than we would care to imagine the only thing that is coming in the way of those solutions and the implementation of those solutions is our individual social responsibility and our collective social responsibility so that corporates consider it to be part of their responsibility not to litter our streets with garbage not to throw the effluent from our factories into the rivers so we can then have a program to clean our rivers not to throw the garbage that we generate on our streets so that we can then create a new program to clean the streets not not to employ child labor so that you know and the list goes on and on so the first point I want to make is let's stop thinking about corporate social responsibility and focus instead on what are we responsible for doing a lot of talk we hear these days on words like governance now you know what exactly is governance to my mind and I've thought about it a lot and I come up with a very simple explanation for governance governance is when I know what I have to do and you know what I have to do and I know what you have to do and you know what you have to do and that knowing and believing and perception is common uniformed and aligned that is governance if all of us simply did what we are responsible for doing frankly there would be very little reason to monitor audit impact and so on so the whole essence as we move forward has to be towards simply corporate responsibility and I say if we need to retain the S word let's call it corporate sustainable responsibility and not social responsibility because tomorrow we will come up with corporate environmental responsibility corporate community responsibility and so on and so forth the reason why I'm saying this is because it is a topic that we read about a lot the first report has been published after the first year of the new Companies Act which actually shows how well corporate India has done with its corporate social responsibility in the first year of implementation and I'm taking this from a report that was published by one of our large research and ratings houses and just to summarize for all of you this was mandated in the Companies Act 2013 the first year of implementation was the fiscal year ended 2015 the average spend in 2015 was 1.3 5 crore 1.3 5 percent as compared with the stipulated amount of 2 percent and this is on the basis of work that has been done to analyze the 3855 companies we have in the BSC of which 1,300 qualified for CSR which is the definition of a certain revenue a certain profit and a certain net worth 75 percent of those 300 1,300 companies or roughly about thousand companies actually implemented CSR programs even though this is something that was mandatory and what do we know about those programs fifty percent of those thousand companies that were analyzed spent more than two percent of their average profit of the last three years on CSR activities and we'll talk about what those are in a minute twenty-eight percent actually spent less than one percent so the blended average we have is of one point three five percent another ten percent or roughly hundred companies said in their annual reports that they are still finalizing their plans and another ten percent roughly or another hundred companies was simply silent this is on CSR now what was also very interesting was that the smaller companies actually did better than the larger companies on the classical definition of CSR so companies with revenues between hundred to five hundred crores about fifty three percent spent more than two percent and 26 percent spent less than one percent amongst companies with revenues of greater than ten thousand crores which are the large companies thirty one percent compared to the fifty three percent spent more than two percent and 36 percent spent less than one percent now all these statistics are great it's fine we don't need to get too involved in these statistics except that suffice to say if we were to really step back and think about how we might envision a future where there is nobody sitting and counting how much I've spent on CSR what is CSR let's look at where some of this money was spent about 82% was spent on education health care rural development and environment as I look at this list I want to challenge this list and say education and healthcare is something which if we follow my definition of good governance is something that has to be provided by the government or the state or whatever when we take a corporate house and say that part of your CSR you can by the way spend on these eight areas of which four I have just listed are we actually doing we're taking a company that knows how to make biscuits or a company that knows how to make detergents or a company that knows how to make steel and we are saying please go and run a hospital or please go and run a school where is the core competency to do that if instead of this we were to think of this not as corporate social responsibility but simply as corporate responsibility and say to the people who are in healthcare whose core business is to run a hospital you run better hospitals you provide great health care at affordable prices and by the way we've got some shining examples of companies like that I can name companies and healthcare or in the hospital I can name companies in you know providing irrigation who have actually embedded a social cause into their business model now the moment I embed a social issue into the business model I am creating longevity I am creating a sustainable way to address an enduring problem I am creating you know an advantage which is there forever so let me be specific what do I mean by this now we do no take I'm going to take a simple example out of healthcare and nutrition you know 70% of school-going children in India today are undernourished or malnourished if you look at the statistics across women and children it is actually a very very horrifying statistic for India we also know that in India we lose approximately one-and-a-half to two percent of our GDP every year where the underlying cause is under nutrition which leads to a symptomatic cause which is low productivity if corporates if schools if hospitals if everybody thought of their responsibilities as employee well-being which leads to higher productivity which leads to gray customer satisfaction we would think about our ecosystem very very differently we would not say this is my business and by the way this is the 2% CSR that I am doing so if all food companies were to take it upon themselves and we've got a great example in this country going back to the 1970s when a decision it wasn't a decision by the corporates it was a decision by the government but I think it was a decision which really to my mind talked about knitting a certain kind of vision and that was a very very simple decision which said let's fortify salt with iodine and we eliminated significantly and forever a problem called goiter and what was the cost of doing that virtually I wouldn't say nil but very little today in some of the work that I do in the area of nutrition I can tell you if we were to start fortifying some of our staples the cost of that fortification with micronutrients which is really what is causing under nutrition apart from access to food in this country is only between 2 to 10 paisa per kilo or per litre that is a very very small price to pay for embedding a social issue which actually impedes our ability to be productive it impedes our ability to for kids to physically grow and achieve the maximum in terms of their cognitive development because we are talking about a country where one out of every three children that is born is born underweight and if you are a girl child in India in six months the statistics turn even more adverse in other words if 22 million children are being born in India every year we are producing 7 million underweight children that will never have the potential to realize their full capacity for physical growth or cognitive development so if I'm a food company today if I'm a company that even indirectly impacts the food ecosystem should I not be thinking of my corporate social responsibility as my corporate responsibility and saying what is it that I can do in the business that I do every day not in my CSR but in the business that I can do every day to address some of these endemic issues which by the way require the public/private partnership of the government the NGOs the private sector the civil society development agencies and so on because we've got to stop thinking of the world we inhabit as my company my business my community and think of a much larger ecosystem if we do not address problems comprehensively if we do not address problems in a manner which is systemic we are never going to realize the dream of living in a society of living in a culture of living in a world which is a world of development growth and understanding for everybody so doing well and doing good is conscientious capitalism now conscientious is a word like listening perhaps that has just gone out of our vocabulary and conscientious simply means that I do with great genuineness and great authenticity that which I am meant to do so if I'm a corporate sector I follow the rules I don't pollute the rivers I don't throw garbage on the street if I'm an individual citizen I do the same and so on and so forth so capitalism is essential as is the government as a civil society as is healthy debate not an argument I would say as is healthy dialogue not even a debate so if we work on the basis of something called conscientious capitalism we very quickly come to the realization that it is not business versus society I've sat in many many forums where if you're from the private sector you are perceived in a certain way and somehow there are many things that the private sector does that the private sector should not be doing why does this perception exist the private sector believes that the government really can't act with efficiency and so on and so forth I think if we are knitting visions if we are knitting visions of a better and a more determined future for us a future where we have not just economic progress but economic and social development we cannot think in ways that are fragmented we cannot think in ways that are fractured we have to think of it in ways that are holistic in ways that are comprehensive and in ways that are systemic so it is not about business versus society it is about business and society coexisting it is not about economic growth alone it is about economic and social development for if we have this we will then think of business any business embedding social issues into its own business model where CSR is not a standalone activity but becomes part of the core business strategy this therefore demands a mindset which is different and a paradigm which operates very differently a mindset which is comprehensive and systemic it is not about breaking it down or chunking it down but adding it all up to create a world a community and a society where we exist or we coexist in harmony with that we are lucky to experience with that we are lucky to have been gifted and with that we must be responsible to respect thank you you