The CSR Practices of a Mining PSU: Implementation Challenges

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in public sector undertakings (PSUs) in India have become an important game changer for environment and community development initiatives over the years due to mandatory CSR regime since 2010. The stakeholder engagement approach mandated by the Government of India has been helpful for contributing toward development of the communities and environment which get affected due to their operations. As socially responsible stakeholders, these PSUs also get an opportunity to create more sustainable existence by focusing attention on the triple bottom line—profit, people, and planet. However, most companies suffer from problems related to CSR Agenda building and implementation of the same. For a mining company, there are additional challenges of addressing the social and environmental impacts of their activities on society. In such cases, these companies face many more additional challenges and obstacles to initiate and implement their CSR policy. The current case study aims to capture the efforts of a mining PSU for CSR projects and how this company has turned its challenges into opportunities by applying CSR interventions to bridge the gap between the community and company through stakeholder engagement approach. This is a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews and focused group discussions of various stakeholders like company officers involved in CSR, partner non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local panchayat members, and beneficiaries. The study was conducted in three units of the mining PSU in three different regions. A gap analysis was conducted on the company’s CSR agenda formulation and implementation, and ways to bridge these gaps have been suggested. The study shows three different models of CSR being used by this mining PSU, from which the factors for successful CSR implementation are duly identified.