‘Currently, most of CSR activities have a marketing, for-profit angle to it’

“If a business is inherently destructive and unwholesome, it should be outlawed by the State. Allowing such a business to continue is government’s way of abdicating its responsibility. It’s like government saying ‘we may not like the nature of your business but we won’t like to forgo the taxes that you pay by banning you’.

I think the ethos of the founders or promoters of businesses play a fundamental role in determining how a business will preserve and create value for the larger society.

I do believe, however, that most businesses are there to make profits; they don’t take a non-profit view of things.

Even CSR is a way to soften the blow for most companies– i.e. to offset the damage to their image that results from some negative effective of their operations, such as pollution. There is thus a strong marketing angle to CSR.

That’s why government will have to be ever vigilant and up-to-date to monitor corporate activities and determine whether a business is creating social value or destroying it.

The State is in the best position to take a non-profit view of things.

The current dysfunction of the State in providing public services and protecting public interest is a temporary phenomenon.

As the State is distancing itself from running industrial enterprises, it will be able to focus more on formulating public policy and making sure that private interests comply with that policy.

I think all companies should be required to publish their annual CSR reports. If need be there should be something like an RTI in the matter of CSR activities of private companies.

More information we have in public domain, more self-regulating corporate activities are likely to become.

Also important is to modernize our laws and judicial system so that the State is ever ready to protect public interest from private greed."

Anup Jain is the Marketing Director-Pizza Hut, Yum! Restaurants (India) Pvt. Ltd.