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What Azim Premji’s presence at an RSS function shows: CSR is not as simple as we think

G Pramod Kumar January 16, 2023, 21:48:14 IST

Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s attendance of an RSS function on Sunday has justifiably raised eyebrows across the country, but the billionaire businessman escaped with a caveat that he didn’t subscribe to the Sangh ideology.

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What Azim Premji’s presence at an RSS function shows: CSR is not as simple as we think

Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s attendance of an RSS function on Sunday has justifiably raised eyebrows across the country, but the billionaire businessman escaped with a caveat that he didn’t subscribe to the Sangh ideology. According to him, he participated in the meeting - Rashtriya Sewa Sangam, a conclave of about 500 NGOs convened by the RSS - to explore “common ground”. “If there are differences of views or divergence of ideas, they can only be resolved through discussion and dialogue,” he reportedly said  while admitting that there were apprehensions about his presence at the event. “Negative people only focus on differences. How empowering it would be for us as a nation if we focus on common causes,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_1187561” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Azim Premji. Reuters Azim Premji. Reuters[/caption] Does it mean that Premji, whose foundation primarily works on education, is looking for opportunities to join hands with RSS-affiliated NGOs? While looking for a common ground, will he able to either overlook or resist the indoctrination of a certain ideology that RSS and Sangh organisations seek through textbooks and class-rooms? Doesn’t he know that the Sangh parivar has an instinctive dislike for a lot of NGOs in India purely because they don’t subscribe to its ideology? That from Dalit activism and human rights protection to environment conservation, they see grand conspiracies in every form of civil society intervention? In his “pluralistic nation”, is he fine with feeding children with an education - particularly on culture, history and social values - that is driven by a certain ideology? In the long run, stopping this revisionism across the country will be a better idea than setting up schools in a few thousand villages with corporate profits. This is the problem with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is arguably part of a company’s image management strategy and hence linked to its business model. When Premji presents himself at an RSS function, it is the businessman who makes the impact, and not the philanthrope. In CSR, the philanthrope doesn’t exist without the businessman. His presence, along with a few others, at the meeting is yet another instance of a predictable pattern of corporate behaviour in BJP’s India. The bonhomie between the big Indian corporates and the BJP is not just a conjecture anymore. That the Indian corporates contributed quite generously to the BJP and the union government is paying back through tax concessions, other freebies and friendly policies is an open secret. About 92 percent of the BJP’s funds came from corporates  and the tax concessions they received from the Modi government totalled about Rs 2 lakh crore . In addition, the government is self-avowedly pro-business .Therefore, whenever they are called in to support, the corporate leaders make a bee-line to appear with the BJP. Therefore, it’s possible that Premji overlooked the “differences” with the RSS and participated in the meeting because that’s what his core business would like him to do. As a true champion of public welfare, he should have used the opportunity to implore the RSS and the BJP not to cut money for welfare and to restore the 20 per cent reduction in health budget. The union government has reportedly cut the budgets for welfare schemes by Rs 75,000 crore. As a socially responsibly corporate citizen, he could urge corporates to give up the tax concessions so that the government can use the same money for purposeful welfare. Interestingly, one of the best criticisms to CSR came from an pro-market American economist, Milton Friedman. In his Capitalism and Freedom he called CSR a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and had said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” In other words, what he says is: go ahead and make money legally - without deception and fraud-, don’t spend it on welfare in the name of corporate responsibility. In fact, this is what Indian corporates too should do. They should make their money without deception, fraud, and violation of laws and people’s rights. Instead of a boutique CSR agenda to “greenwash” their ecological sins and “window-dress” their unethical, illegal and anti-people activities, they should strive to become better corporates. No point in glossing over a polarising agenda as finding “common ground” or setting up water treatment plans after sucking villages dry of their water. Instead of taking massive freebies from governments and spending pittance on an agenda decided by their PR managers, the corporates should ask the government(s) to spend the same money on people. Premji’s foundation can certainly educate a few thousand villages, not the entire country. Development should be the responsibility of the governments, not the corporates.

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