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CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A COMMONER’S PERSPECTIVE

There are numerous words today that connote what most of the world knows as Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR: Corporate Conscience, Corporate Citizenship, and the like. This is testament to the importance that it has garnered as businesses worldwide have progressively expanded their scale and scope. CSR is in essence a self-regulating mechanism that is integrated into a business model; hence the term ‘responsibility.’

This policy aims at doing all those things that are required for businesses to ensure their support for legal, ethical, and social norms and hence is based on the philosophy that every business must embrace responsibility for the impacts of its activities and operations on stakeholders, communities, the environment and the entire public sphere. Also, when businesses focus on CSR, often they aim at the protection and promotion of public interest, regardless of legality. This is because while some practices may be legal, they may not really be in the best interests of the people.

From my previous work experience in a port company, an example comes to mind. My company had acquired all statutory environmental clearances to proceed with the acquisition of land and construction of facilities for the port, yet there was an element that silently opposed the port: the locals. The local people worshipped the turtle as a deity, and believed that the establishment of the port would result in substantial harm being sustained to the population of Olive Ridley turtles that nested in the area each year, that pollution would kill them or worse, drive them away forever. These fears were unfounded since the company had received the necessary environmental clearances; who better than the government itself to safeguard the existence of an endangered species of turtle. Yet the stigma remained with the

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