The Hindu Business Line : `Cos must report social, green activities in balance sheet'

ENVIRONMENTAL and social welfare activities of companies should be reported along with other financial reports, according to Mr Kishore A. Chaukar, Managing Director, Tata Industries Ltd. "We should start putting it in the balance-sheet," he said.

Speaking at the seventh social summit, a conference on `Implementing CSR (corporate social responsibility) as a Business Strategy - A Roadmap for Effective and Sustainable Penetration' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said that triple bottomline accounting — that takes into account not only the financial bottomline but also the social bottomline and the environmental bottomline — is a concept worth adopting.

He said that Tata Industries believes in not just investing money in CSR but also investing in the skill-set of the various industries. He cited the example of Titan offering classes on ornament-making to volunteers from South Africa, who then passed on the knowledge to impoverished people in their country to empower them to become financially independent. He added that Tata Consultancy Services had conducted programmes in which adults were educated in reading and writing.

Mr Venu Srinivasan, Chairman, CII - Human Resource Development and Social Infrastructure Development Council, and Managing Director, Sundaram Clayton Ltd, said that Sundaram Clayton has initiated several rural development programmes to improve educational systems, provide access to economic development and improving water and irrigation facilities.

Speaking later to the media, he said that about 5 per cent of the net profit goes into CSR activities. He said the CII has an important role to play in CSR, and can implement it through its network the way it did with total quality management (TQM).

Mr Yohei Sasakawa, President, Nippon Foundation, an organisation that is dedicated to eradicating leprosy worldwide, said that due to the efforts of the foundation, NGOs, and the State and Union Governments of India, leprosy would be eradicated in India by the end of the year.

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