Does corporate alone have social responsibility? What is our responsibility to the society as individuals? Go on to read about Individual Social Responsibility (ISR)
There is an idiom in Tamil which goes like this; “pick up the coconut from the roadside shop (without paying any money!) and break the coconut before the street corner idol of Lord Ganesha (as an offer to get His blessings to fulfill one’s own personal needs)”. I wonder, what apparently is happening in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is something like this!
Corporate is basically an entity built on the principle of dharma. To bring anything together is ‘dharma’. When people come together in any form it is the first pulsation of divinity. In other words, to bring people together in any form is dharma. One which holds together is dharma. Take the case of the solar system. The innumerable stars that are around in the solar system are following certain principle or set of principles, some rules, some laws and they are subject to change that is dharma. In a family, the family members are held together; that is dharma. In a locality, in a society, various types of people following very many things, various economics, political, social, cultural, religious functionalists for a society, can pull on together, which is dharma. Dharma is a principle of life. This principle of life is in everything and of course it is in the corporate as well because a corporate exists by holding people together to accomplish a defined (!) goal(s).
A corporate does not exist in isolation and neither is it insulated from the rest of the society. It is very much part of the society. There is always an osmosis effect prevailing between the corporate and the society in which it operates. Through this process of osmosis, the corporate and the society support each other and suppose to benefit each other, which is not the case all the time. While the corporate support the society by providing employment opportunities to the people in that society, the people thus employed in turn make profit for the corporate which do not always come back to the same society. It is Mahatma Gandhi who said, “with corporate profit should also come a proportionate philosophy of giving back to society”. It is in this context, there is increasing realization that the corporate has to give back to the society a certain percentage of its profit which is considered as fulfilling social responsibility. Thus we liberally talk about the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Does corporate alone have the social responsibility? How can we make the corporate alone responsible for the society? Does it mean that we, the people have the social responsibility only when we are in a group or only when we are put together to form a corporate? Do we not have any responsibility as individuals towards the society? I believe, more than as corporate, as individuals we owe more to the society which support us for our survival and growth.
I was in Malaysia some time back to attend an International Business Management Conference, where I presented my paper on SIV-G (Self Imposed Vigilance for good Governance) and talked about the website www.siv-g.org. While I was doing so, one of the delegates asked me, “Suresh, why are you doing all these? What do you get out of this?” I replied, “It is my individual social responsibility (ISR), a commitment I evolved within myself to accomplish”. This brings to the point that there need to be a self commitment, without any external force to contribute to the society because of which we exist and excel.
Thus there is a need for a strong commitment from every individual to contribute to the society. This commitment is what I would call as Individual Social Responsibility (ISR), like the CSR. I am very keen to popularize the idea of Individual Social Responsibility (ISR). Why should we pass on the responsibility to the corporate entities which most of the time throw money like the coconut to Lord Ganesha? More than that what is needed is the commitment by the individuals through ISR. When it happens, it will be through millions of people and the impact will be unimaginable even if the contribution is minimal.
Now, what could be the first commitment one can make under ISR? A very simple one! One need not throw money (pick up the coconut). It must be the commitment of demonstrating one’s integrity and honesty in every walks of life and being not very selfish! This is something which is absolutely in one’s hand and one need not look out on external materiallistic things on which we do not have any control. There cannot be a greater commitment and contribution to the society by an individual than this little one as Individual Social Responsibility! Once this basic commitment is fulfilled, then, perhaps an individual can think of higher commitments and then go on to the commitment of corporate social responsibility. If the ISR becomes a way of life, then perhaps, there would be hardly any need for CSR, because by fulfilling the commitments of ISR, every part of the society, including the corporate would have made a strong foundation on which the whole society operate in a much better way.
After all, it is said “give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you!” Perhaps, the commitment through ISR is the best way to demonstrate our basic character (like integrity, honesty and so on) to the society, if not the best in us, which in turn will come back to us from the society in the best way!
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