Corporate Social Responsibility: Fallacies in Its Effective Implementation in India

When India enacted the Companies Act, 2013, it became one of the few countries of the world to make Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a legal obligation for a large number of Indian companies. Using a comprehensive analysis of company’s CSR disclosures, this paper provides a bird’s-eye view on the major issues plaguing the current regulatory framework on CSR in India. In addition, this paper also highlights the major differences between privately owned and government companies on their motivations, approaches and challenges to the implementation and enforcement of CSR law of India. This paper largely argues that, the Indian CSR regulations are excessively broad and provide wide flexibilities that are possibly being misused, and hence, need legislative amendments to make them more concise, and improve accountability and transparency. The author in this context makes a critical and doctrinaire study over the context to investigate its implementation by the Business entities. From a broader corporate law perspective, this paper finds that while the current company law in India may have adopted a more stakeholder-centric approach by its construction, the approach of many companies towards the enforcement and implementation of CSR and the law remains essentially shareholder centric. In light of the above observations, the author would like to suggest that the existing regulatory framework needs to be strengthened with several legislative measures such as stricter auditing and monitoring measures for third-party implementing agencies and pre-and post-project impact assessment mechanisms.