162
S
tate
of
I
ndia
’
s
L
ivelihoods
R
eport
2015
Funding under CSR
Last year, back-of-the-envelope calcula-
tions had been made that the corporate
sector may spend about
`
200 billion on
CSR activities based on numbers of their
past profits. A report during the current
year shows that the CSR spending for the
year 2014–15 is likely to be around
`
50
billion. The Indian Institute of Corporate
Affairs (IICA) had estimated that 16,300
companies that attract the CSR provisions
of Companies Act would spend about
`
200
billion each year. A recent paper
4
states that
the actual CSR spend might be higher than
`
250 billion. Satish Deodhar says,
As per the union budget of 2015–16, the
corporate tax will amount to a whopping
`
470,628 crore for the financial year 2015–16
(MF, 2015). Second, their estimates are
based on the Prowess data provided for the
well as providing ECG and X-ray testing facili-
ties. In education, the tribal ashram schools
have been taken up for intensive support and
e-learning programmes have been introduced.
Fifteen villages in a contiguous area are put into
a cluster and the staffs of the foundation attend
to the requirements of farmers in those areas
from the cluster office.
The people have been
organised into family development groups and
each family is required to prepare a plan and
get it approved by the groups in which they are
members.
Service delivery is through the fam-
ily development group to individual families
based on their plan. An elaborate database at
the district level has been set up so that family
level monitoring of progress become possible.
The experience of the foundation has been
positive in the real sector and natural resource
management aspects. Microfinance activities
which were set up as part of the foundation’s
work to ensure that people will get access to
loan have not done well. Since staff involved
in development were also involved in provid-
ing loans, the recovery rates have been poor
and the project has found it difficult to instil
the required credit discipline. The foundation
is considering exiting from the microfinance
activities so that the other activities are inten-
sified. As a strategy to provide formal options
both for accessing inputs and selling outputs
in the market, a producer company has been
formed with 1,000 shareholders in one of the
project blocks. The company has already com-
menced supplying inputs to its members. It is
hoping to start aggregating outputs for selling
at remunerative prices in the larger markets.
The foundation listed the following as the
challenges. The monitoringmechanismdespite
being elaborate is unable to produce real time
data of the kind required for effective monitor-
ing. The targets set seem to be ambitious for
the very short time frame in which it has to be
achieved. The tribals in the area with whom
the project is working show a low response
especially on the micro finance part of the pro-
gramme. Family based plans produce demands
for a wide variety of activities which are difficult
to coordinate because some of the activities do
not have the kind of numbers for the project
to provide close attention. A number of people
that are landless remain in the households for
whom finding viable local livelihoods options
is difficult. Marketing of produce that is arising
from improved productivity has become one
of the most important issues to be addressed
in the near future.
Despite the challenges, the DBMGF is
bringing hope to the people in a dry district
in Marathwada region of Maharashtra. It
provides technical services, new ideas on how
better and more viable livelihoods can be
undertaken in the local area, aggregating and
organising people into community entities
that can work together in common interest,
providing solutions for water and soil through
appropriate interventions and also providing
knowledge skills through the entire gamut of
activities. When corporate organisations invest
on end-to-end solutions in a given geographi-
cal area where skills, ideas, actual livelihood
activities, investments required for the same
and education and health are woven together
in a complete fabric then they really make a
huge difference.
Source:
By the author based on field visit to their
project location and discussions with the staff.
4
Satish Y. Deodhar, 2015, India’s Mandatory CSR:
Process of Compliance and Channels of Spending.
Ahmedabad: IIM.
