New Delhi:- India’s premiere B-School, IMT Ghaziabad convened a panel session titled “Leveraging CSR: Companies Act 2013 and Beyond” to discuss how CSR, in general and the mandatory 2% CSR provision in the Companies Act 2013, in particular can be leveraged for generating wider social good along with its corporate acceptability. The panel discussion was organised as a part of the ‘Business, Government and Society in India’ (BGSI) course presently being offered to the Second Year students of  the Two-Year PGDM Program of IMT Ghaziabad.

The panel discussion moderated by Dr. Kasturi Das, Associate Professor, Economics, IMT Ghaziabad witnessed a momentous presence of noted panel members, each having vast experience and a wide working knowledge on CSR and related areas. The panellists enlightened students on the novel mandatory CSR requirement included in the new Companies Act 2013.The purpose was to provide students with perspectives from the three angles- government, civil society and corporates and help in answering the numerous queries of students regarding CSR and related issues.

Mr Nikhil Pant, Chief Programme Executive, National Foundation for CSR, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India brought to the fore the Government perspectives and took every care to clear the doubts in the students’ minds about CSR-related provisions pertaining to the Companies Act 2013. He said, “CSR is corollary to the business. It is in addition to the business of any organization. Presently, there is a lot of work happening in the CSR space and businesses have enough freedom to implement their CSR policy. The IIAC is working on a CSR index in collaboration with the BSE to critically evaluate the CSR work being done by the companies. If implemented in true letter and spirit of the law, CSR can be a game changer for Indian business and nation building.  The BSE-IICA CSR Index is one of the tools that would seek to develop a business case for CSR.

Mr. Vijay Vardhan Vasireddy, Operations Manager, Social Investments Programme, ITC, Kolkata provided a succinct overview of ITC’s work on strategic CSR over the past several years. He said, “The belief of ITC lies in that future managers and opinion leaders need to develop empathy. We believe that businesses cannot succeed in societies if they fail to implement proper CSR policies. The next two years are extremely crucial for companies in terms of their CSR work. They need to builds up a separate CSR team in future to sophisticatedly handle and execute CSR responsibilities.”

Mr Debajit Palit, Associate Director & Senior Fellow, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi shared his experience of leading the much talked about and well-acclaimed TERI program on solar lamps known as “Lighting a Billion Lives”, which indeed turns out to be an excellent case study of how CSR can be leveraged to make a significant difference to society. He said, “Money is not the problem in India but the real problem is the lack of institutions at the grass-root level. The lack of flexibility especially in PSUs is one of the main challenges that create hurdle in the implementation of CSR. Corporate usually support hardware developments which are tangible, in preference to soft costs such as training which is intangible. We need new paradigm of development to create something good for the society. Pro-poor Public-Private Partnership (5P Model) involving government, corporates and society can steer this new paradigm of development in the country”

The panellists were highly appreciative of their interaction with the students and applauded IMT for organizing such panel discussion at regular intervals. They seemed impressed with the students’ fresh perspectives and profound knowledge on CSR and its role in current business environment.