Making India Resilient: An Overview of Corporate Social Responsibility Funding in Disaster Risk Reduction

Co-Authors: Dr Simple Arora, Mridu Kapoor and Jagriti Sarkar

Abstract: Established by the Companies Act, 2013, it is noteworthy to point out that in India, the mandate compels large corporations to invest a mandatory two per cent of their average net profits into social causes, also known as the Corporate Social Responsibility. Its Schedule VII lists “disaster management, including relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction activities” as an approved as well as crucial area for our discussion, making corporate spending a vital part of India’s disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategy. We have first quantified the total amount and percentage of CSR expenditure allocated to activities listed under the broad ‘Disaster Management’ (including disaster risk reduction, disaster relief and the grey area we found through our study) clause of Schedule VII for the top ten CSR funding companies of India. The core of the study involves a detailed content analysis of project descriptions, budgets, and implementation strategies as detailed in the companies' Annual Reports and the reports from the National CSR Portal. We hypothesise that the CSR spending of India's top ten contributors in FY 2023-24 exhibits a systemic and significant bias, with the majority of disaster-related expenditure concentrated in the reactive Disaster Relief (D-R) phase, resulting in a demonstrable underinvestment in strategic, long-term Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) measures. Our results affirm our hypothesis and indicate that less than 1% of the total CSR budget of the top ten companies is being utilized for disaster management including disaster risk reduction, disaster relief and the grey area found through the study.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience

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WSDM_CSR in DRR_Engage.pdf

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