CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN INDIA – CURRENT SCENARIO AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was made mandatory in India by the Companies Act of 2013, thus the evaluation of CSR activities over the years has become inevitable. Any unit or business derives a lot from the society so it is the responsibility of the business or unit to contribute some portion of its annual profits. The belief that it should be allocated for the society is getting stronger today. As a result, this provision was made mandatory under Section-135 of the Companies Act, 2013.

The main objective of this research paper was to know the meaning of CSR and to get information about the existing CSR legal framework. Also, to know the present rank of Indian companies, states in CSR activities and to study what problems in implementation of CSR in India have been observed in recent years. The entire data for this research has been obtained from secondary data. This information is presented in a simple table and classification. From the findings of the study, it is known that most of the Indian companies are still not registered on the portal of CSR, and the number of companies has been decreasing in recent years which is a matter of concern for India. Identified development areas of corporate social responsibility and disparity in spending by states were also observed and other challenges are studied in this paper. Government and key stakeholders have to play an active role to overcome this problem.