I Jyoti Agarwal n 2022, on an August day, in a small hall in Mumbai, Ratan Tata, aged eighty-four years old found himself among other elderly people and recent graduates. No inspiring speeches, celebrities, or grand philanthropic ventures took place at the event. Instead, it signified the beginning of a new venture, called Goodfellows, which…
Each CSR annual report from India now includes a photograph of women at a training centre holding certificates and smiling into the camera. In fact, the real question is what happens when the lens clicks off? Female labour force participation has, for example, risen from 23.3 percent to 41.7 percent in India from 2023-24 to…
In a corner of Chhattisgarh, the Vedanta Skill School, run under BALCO’s CSR program, has trained more than 15,000 rural youth. 83% of the 1,200 trainees have been placed in jobs over the past year alone. A few hundred kilometres away, HDFC Bank’s Parivartan initiative marked World Youth Skills Day 2026. It reported that its…
By early August 2026, roughly 481 villages across Assam had gone completely underwater. 90 relief camps were sheltering close to 30,000 people. Another 94 distribution centres supplied essentials to those who had not been evacuated. This is not Assam’s first devastating flood season. Unless something structural changes, it will not be its last. The death…
40,794 crore rupees. According to Bharat CSR Performance Report 2026, the expenditures of corporate India jumped 17% over the previous year, on social responsibility in FY 2024-25. This has pushes India’s cumulative CSR investment past ₹2.61 lakh crore since the mandate began. This feels like a triumph of policy on paper. However, peeling the back…
Sport in India is now transforming from solely an entertainment activity to an actual instrument for social development. From the upliftment of women to the enhancement of local relations, sports at the local level increasingly demonstrate how they lead to education, build self-confidence, and help individuals climb the socio-economic ladder. Let us take the example…
India’s latest CSR initiative encourages CPSEs to prioritize sports funding, potentially reshaping grassroots development, athlete support, and India’s Olympic ambitions.
MORE MONEY THAN EVER, REACHING THE SAME PLACES Here is a genuinely encouraging statistic, followed immediately by a genuinely uncomfortable one. Since India’s CSR mandate came into effect in 2014 under the Companies Act, more than Rs 2.2 lakh crore has flowed into the country’s development sector. Nearly two third of total spending in just…
Envision a commitment extended to everyone around the globe: when you fall ill, you have access to a physician. When you are expecting a child, you can give birth securely. When you are facing the end of life, you will not endure suffering. That none of this will lead to financial ruin for your family….
Budget Trends: Welfare vs Capital Expenditure Recent Union budgets have explicitly favored capital investment. The table below summarizes Union spending; the capital (capex) share of total expenditure has climbed from ~17% in FY2022-23 to ~23% in FY2026-27. Revenue expenditure (salaries, subsidies, subsidies etc.) has grown more slowly. States, facing rising debt-to-GSDP ratios (>40% in some)…
