Fewer companies may have chosen to spend on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the financial year 2018-19, but those who spent have chosen Karnataka as the most favoured destination after Maharashtra.
Karnataka has received Rs 3,014.57 crore CSR funds in the past four years since 2014. Other South Indian states are way behind Karnataka as far as corporate India’s social spends are concerned. While the cumulative CSR fund received by Andhra Pradesh has been Rs 2,727.79 crore from 2014-18, it has been only Rs 2,330.56 crore in case of Tamil Nadu.
A total of Rs 914 crore of CSR fund has been given out to Telangana in the four years since CSR spends were made mandatory in 2014, but Kerala has got less than Rs 500 crore.
Maharashtra, with the highest spend of Rs 8468.28 crore, has acquired the top place in the list of states receiving the CSR funds from corporate India. CSR is the integration of socially beneficial programmes and practices into a corporation’s business model.
Companies with a net worth of at least Rs 500 crore, turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or a net profit of Rs 5 crore in the immediately preceding financial years are required to spend 2% of their average profits over the last three years on CSR, according to the Companies Act of 2013.
However, a high-level committee set up by the Centre to review the CSR activities and suggest a policy roadmap, has expressed concern that less developed or backward districts of Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, which need more of CSR funds for their development, have been ignored by corporate India.
Of India’s 718 districts, about 16% or 117 of them have been termed as most backward districts by the Niti Aayog. About 55% of these districts, also termed as aspirational districts, fall in Jharkhand, Bihar, UP, MP and Chhattisgarh.
According to the report, these districts got only 9% of the total expenditure towards CSR from 2014 to 2018.
On the other hand, states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, which possess only about 11% of backward districts, together
received approximately 40% of the total CSR spends since 2014.