Financial Times

Corporate Social Responsibility: Walking the tight rope
By Random Access Memory (RAM)
RAM was at a gathering where a top corporate leader announced his conglomerate's plans to set up a special CSR fund and a unit within the organisation to ensure that more publicity is given to the socially responsible work they do. "We do so much to help society, but no one knows about it.

We need to let the world know of what we do, much more effectively, than we do now," he lamented, referring to the many millions of rupees donated to charities and other causes that seek corporate help. We are told that requests for contributions to charities exceed the hundreds per day mark for most large corporate entities.

A few years ago UN Secretary General Kofi Annan launched the Global Compact Initiative to make the international corporate sector more socially responsible and appealed to those in business to set in place solid initiatives to incorporate a strong social dimension within their mainstream business activity.

The clichés of the past of 'Trade before aid' and 'Poverty Alleviation' seem to have had only limited success and the recently concluded UNCTAD conference has once again focussed on the issue of the widening gap between the haves and have-nots of the world, due to the blatant resistance of the developed world to create level playing fields for transfer of resources and for trade and commerce.

It is true that the WTO/ GATT rounds have taken significant strides, but the new issues that spring up such as protection of several turfs by rich and powerful nations, the subtle gaining of access to the world's geological and biological resources and the issue of IT haves and have-nots, continue to mar the sincerity of purpose of these initiatives.

A good majority of the world's population having access to only a meagre portion of the world's wealth is a syndrome, which has continued to worry the pundits at the UN and other international organisations.

The increasing widening of the gap between the rich and the poor of the world is seen as the key cause for social and political tension in the global, regional and national contexts. Poverty is a potent social destabiliser which unless addressed becomes a major deterrent to development. An aspect left in the exclusive hands of governments in the past is today brought to the doorstep of the corporate world by the UN itself. The issue is addressed at the core with the 'engines of growth' within nations; the formal private sector.

In the Sri Lankan context, the increasing support among the voting public, for the 'Rathu Sahodarayas' and for the 'Dharma Rajya' seeking Buddhist clergy, placing them in positions of political power, has become a stark reality.

The very institutions that talked about decorum and conventions they needed to guard in the past, are today seeking ways to create proactive ways through which, the small business sector could be linked with the formal sector as a CSR initiative.

The happy note is that there are exceptions to the rule. One such exception is the story of another corporate leader, who always requested that there be no fanfare of what the company has been doing with rural communities to uplift their living standards.

For several years now, they have devised innovative programmes to integrate the informal agricultural sector with the export sector by providing financial assistance, know-how and infrastructure. It has been a win-win for all stakeholders and a model for emulation.

The point of emphasis is that there was no fanfare, no CSR publicity units, no conferences and workshops held to discuss the model in public. Only solid, silent work on the ground, to provide water, seeds, know-how, finances and access to markets for the farmers.

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