Symposium on Corporate Social Responsibility

The Department of Public Enterprises in partnership with World Bank and Harvard Business School is organising a Symposium, tomorrow in Mumbai on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - to share knowledge and experience about the trends and best practices of CSR prevalent worldwide. The Government is looking to learning from the successful CSR practices of state-owned enterprises in the developed and developing economies through conferences, workshops, seminars and state tours for greater advocacy and research in CSR.

The Department of Public Enterprises(DPE) is at a disadvantage at not having a proper training course curriculum and teaching modules for training public sector executives and other CSR implementing agencies in the country. World bank assistance and support is being sought in formulating course curriculum, teaching modules and selection of international case studies. World Bank’s assistance is also being sought for assistance in facilitating training courses and exchange programmes with reputed international institutes/organizations like Harvard Business School, Wharton School of Business etc. who have expertise in this field.

The Government is in the process of reviewing the CSR guidelines and also the processes and structures associated with its implementation and is looking forward to inputs from the World Bank and other reputed institutions for creation of intermediary structures, their framework, composition, local status and modalities of functioning. The Department will be working closely with these institutions in identifying areas of engagements between Government’s public sector enterprises, other institutions and agencies for the programme implementation of socio-economic development goals specific to India, based on UN Millennium Development Goals, through robust effective CSR programmes and projects.

CSR activities are required essentially to fill in the gaps where the administrative machinery of the State with its limited resources is unable to reach and sufficiently impact the lives of the people. DPE guidelines and CSR provide ample flexibility, choice and discretion to the public enterprises in the selection of areas and activities, but unique and special programmes are required to be taken up at State and National level which have wider and greater social impact. Public Enterprises are expected to undertake CSR activities which help in capacity building, which ultimately equips people with the skills required to improve the quality of their lives and eventually lead to inclusive growth. CSR is to be used for infrastructure development in under-developed area. The public enterprises would ideally join hands and pool their resources in undertaking joint ventures for long term projects which have greater feasibility and create a ripple effect in socio-economic development.

The Department of Corporate Affairs, the Department of Economic Affairs, Non-Governmental Organizations and leading corporations from the public and private sector of the country will be participating in the Symposium along with the Department of Public Enterprises, World Bank and the Harvard Business School. The Symposium is being inaugurated by the Minister for Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, Shri Praful Patel.