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Report of CRI Conference held at Le Meridien, New Delhi.
Scratch My Soul organized a CSR Reporting Conference on September 27, 2008. The following members were present at the meeting:
  • Dr. P. B. Sharma
  • Mr. Abhijit Bhaumik
  • Mr. M.S. Bhandari
  • Mr. Sanjeev Gupta
  • Dr. Dalip Singh
  • Mr. Anthony De Sa
  • Mr. Ajay Poddar
  • Mr. Thomas Matthew
  • Mr. Mani Prasad
  • Mr. Mukesh Sharma
  • Mr. Pratap Verma
  • Ms. Meghna Ghosh
  • Mr. Raghav Chandra
  • Mr. Ajay K Gupta
  • Mr. Shlok Chandra
Points that were laid out on the table
  1. The vision of the company should have people at the centre of it. Anything that is on the company's vision statement should focus on people.
    Counter Statement - A company's mission statement is not as important as is the final result. CSR has to be something more than just the USP or vision.
  2. In actual practice it is important to know how many employees are getting involved in CSR. Usually employees take part in CSR only as a part of obeying their senior's/manager's instructions. It is important to know if the fundamentals of CSR are a part of the employee or not. Percolation of social responsibility to the bottom most layer in the hierarchy is a must.
  3. It is the moral responsibility of any organization to take part in as many activities of social cause as it can. It can range from setting up a school in a remote part of the nation to arranging tree plantation drives in the location of the enterprise. As long as they have the funds, they should contribute towards the society as much as they can.
    Counter Statement – Organizations are running a business. That is why they exist. It is not important to involve in all sort of activities of a social cause. That said, it is important for the organization, to do it right, whatever it is doing. For instance, a paper industry need not open up schools but should definitely plant a thousand saplings for every 100 trees brought down. Or, a manufacturing unit with huge amounts of toxic waste should reduce the wastes produced per unit of output and dispose the wastes in the right manner. They did not fund an old-age home – it is fine.
  4. When a 3rd party evolves such an index, it will be very subjective and hence the purpose of the index will be defeated. Most of the industries have their norms laid out – so it is not necessary to re-invent the wheel. Instead SMS can just collect data that is relevant to any vertical and collate it all for our indexing system.
  5. There is a serious contradiction in the CSR model – ITC is said to be extremely CSR complaint/friendly. But they produce cigarettes which are obviously harmful products. Is this being CSR defiant? This point was made to prove that – businesses essentially run with profit motive, hence it is important to be ethical in their realm of work. As long as a company does this, it can be labelled CSR compliant.
  6. More often than not, the site will be accessed by people who have some negative/constructive feedback to deliver, not when they are happy with the product/service. This can immensely skew the data that we collect.
  7. The 3rd party auditors who are appointed, will also need to be looked at – changing auditors periodically, how often is a report audited (essentially since there will always be people posting comments.) Also, auditors like E&Y and PWC are very urbane. It is important to have Indian/rural perspective on these issues.
  8. There is also fraud at NGO levels whose existence is for a social cause. How do we measure their CSR?
  9. Publicity has to be distinguished from core responsibility. Principally we should see CSR as a way in which the organization is behaving with the society. The parameters to measure CSR under an industry vertical should be related to the core functions of the industry.
  10. What percentage of profits is being used for CSR activity and more importantly who is it being spent on? The organization has to identify the right stake holder.
  11. The concepts of governance and CSR are being used inter changeably. Corp governance is almost statutory in nature in terms of accountability and of reporting of the organization. CSR is not plain economics. Organizations are supposed to spend a part of their profits for general public also
  12. CSR is subjective and it is necessary to ignore extremes values in the rating. How will all this grading be evolved? Is it a master opinion poll?
  13. Weight age should be given on the following order of priority:
    1. Most weight age to organizations conducting CSR activities themselves
    2. Less weight age to organizations that donate funds to NGOs.
      (More weight age must be given to NGOs that are run by the organization itself.)
Important Questions that were raised on the table
  1. Who has created the index
  2. Who will use the index and why
  3. What should be done to ensure that the index is used and is not abused? (Corporate wars etc.)
  4. How do we build the credibility that the society will look for when SMS becomes popular?
  5. Who is providing the ratings? Us or the organizations themselves?
  6. Is CSR beyond statutory compliance? Should statutory compliance be a part of CSR at all or not? Or is CSR compliance plus something else?
  7. Why should companies subscribe to us? What is the value addition we make and how do we build the credibility required to be successful in this?
Almost Unanimous parameters for the index
The index should be a 4-step ladder:
  1. Compliance with regulatory norms as they are laid down – Must Do
  2. Within those norms, are the organizations doing beyond the expected in the norms – Should Do.
  3. Beyond norms, is the organization doing something to ensure betterment of people in the area in which it is functioning?
  4. Over and above these 3 – Could Do.
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