Tech underpins a new wave of Indian corporate social responsibility
Financial Inclusion
Priya Naik, Founder and Managing Director of Samhita Social Ventures emphasizes on financial inclusion as the key to economic and social development in an article in CSR Mandate.
In India RBI describes financial inclusion as the process of ensuring access to appropriate financial products and services needed by vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low-income groups at an affordable in a fair and transparent manner by mainstream institutional players.
Financial inclusion is a fundamental cornerstone of economic and social development. The mandatory CSR spending, as stipulated by the Companies Bill 2012, can help foster partnerships and help achieve a joint approach to promoting financial inclusion in a way that is mutually beneficial to all stakeholders. In order to realize the goal of universal financial inclusion, each stakeholder has to play its part and more importantly, collaborate with each other to harness the benefits and synergies of shared efforts.
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The Better India featured Samhita
India Inc buckles up to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
“Whether to safeguard their workers or help strengthen the country
Are healthcare facilities accessible to India
“India no longer has the luxury of continuing to wait and watch as millions of its tribal peoples suffer and die from preventable causes.”
There is a much higher incidence of maternal and under-five mortality, stuntedness, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases among India’s 104 million tribals compared with the larger population.
Piramal Swasthya and The Bridgespan Group map out the reasons for the lack of reduction of health challenges in tribal areas based on their field studies.
They outline factors such as barriers in access to healthcare and information, insufficient number of public health facilities, and lack of data.
They stress that for scalable and population-wide impact to be achieved, especially to meet India’s national aspirations of Sustainable Development goals of health and well being- a focused and collaborative approach between all stakeholders of society is the only way forward.
Align your employees with a broader purpose
“Employees are agitating for decisions and behaviours that they can be proud to stand behind and gravitating toward companies that have a clear, unequivocal, and positive impact on the world. Organizations turning a blind eye will face inevitable blowback”.
Read McKinsey & Company’s insightful article ‘Purpose: Shifting from how to why
The importance of NGO Governance
Ragini Menon, Consultant and Anushree Parekh, Advisor at Samhita Social Ventures ask,
Enabling Stakeholders to Take Purposeful Action for Large-Scale Social Impact
“Beyond CSR, we believe in companies integrating social responsibility into their business practices. We have developed the Responsible Corporate Citizenship Continuum (RCCC) to articulate the role of the private sector in society and to provide companies with a framework to conceive human rights and social and environmental responsibility in their business practices as well as CSR.”
Priya Naik, Founder and CEO, Samhita Social Ventures is interviewed by CSR Mandate where she shares Samhita’s strategies and learnings over the last 10 years while collaborating with a variety of stakeholder such as companies, social enterprises, NGOs, governments, multilaterals and donors. Samhita has curated a number of collaborative platforms to address challenges such as gender inequality, water and sanitation and sustainable livelihoods, with each contributing stakeholder honing their core competencies to collectively create significant impact. In response to COVID, Samhita set up the India Protectors Alliance (IPA) to provide support and equipment to India’s frontline health care and sanitation workers, and REVIVE to pave the path for sustainable recovery of jobs and livelihoods by providing financial and technical assistance.
Freedom to earn a livelihood with dignity
Covid-19 was an eye-opener for many businesses in that it revealed the importance of migrant and informal workers in a business’s supply chains. Undoubtedly, the corporate sector holds the potential and responsibility to change the dynamics within which workers operate. It is therefore in their own enlightened self-interest that businesses should understand migrant workers
