Backward districts get less CSR fund location

MUMBAI: India Inc’s CSR funding embrace wealthiest cities, backward districts lag behind Pune district tops the list in receiving the highest amount of CSR funding, followed by Mumbai City District and Bangalore Rural district. Around 44 districts on the ‘backward-districts’ list by Niti Ayog, never got any CSR fund allocation.

The India Inc. has spent more than Rs 28,000 crore in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in three years between 2014-15 and 2016-17, according to the data compiled by ministry of corporate affairs.

The Companies Act, 2013, mandates that Indian corporates, both public and private, to allocate at least two percent of their net profits towards corporate social CSR.

This is a huge amount, but has the amount being spent responsibly?

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If we analyse the CSR spending by Indian corporates district-wise, the wealthiest districts comes out as major beneficiaries and the backward districts continued to lag behind.

Pune district tops the chart with the inflow of around Rs 444 crore during the same period.

Followed by Mumbai City district (Rs 414 crore), Bangalore Rural district (Rs 374 crore) and Ahmedabad district (Rs 357 crore).

These are followed by many other wealthier districts such as Gurugram District, Gautam Budh Nagar district (Noida), Vadodara district and Surat district etc.

The financial capital of India, Mumbai, is the wealthiest city in the country and is home to highest number of billionaires and millionaires.

The second largest city in the state of Maharashtra, Pune, is known for automobile industries and information technology companies.

The per capita income of Pune district is around Rs 2 lakh as on March 31, 2017. Even other cities in the top ten list are among the wealthiest cities in India.

Gurugram has a per capita income of more than Rs 3 lakh and Surat, which is also known as the diamond city of India, has a per capita income of Rs 2.3 lakh as on March 31, 2017.

The only exception in the top ten list is Korba district in Chhattisgarh, which has received Rs 273 crore of CSR funding during the same period.

Korba district has been recently identified as a backward district by Niti Aayog under their ‘Aspirational Districts Programme’.

The government think-tank has recently released a list of 101 backwards districts under the same programme.

Barring few, these districts got the least attention from Indian corporates while allocating funds under CSR.

In all, these 101 districts received only Rs 763 crore of CSR funding between 2014-15 and 2016-17, which is less than the CSR funding revived by the top two districts – Pune and Mumbai City district have together received.

See the list of top ten districts below:

District : Cr. Rupees
Pune : 444
Mumbai City : 414
Bangalore Rural : 347
Ahmedabad : 357
Korba : 273
Chennai : 272
Kolkata : 252
Vellore : 219
Bangalore Urban : 191

_{CSR funds allocated (FY15 – FY17), Rs. crore} 

Source: National CSR Portal, Ministry of Corporate Affairs

Moreover, this amount is also spiked by three districts – Korba (Chhattisgarh), Singrauli (Madhya Pradesh) and Aurangabad (Bihar).

These districts, despite falling under the backward-class, have received a substantial amount from the CSR spending by Indian corporates.

Apart from these, the other backward districts in the list have either received negligible or no CSR spending.

Around 44 districts on the list have never caught the attention of the corporates, when it comes to CSR spending.

Jharkhand has 19 districts in the list of backward districts, but none of these districts have ever received any fund from Indian corporates under CSR.

Similarly, Uttar Pradesh which has eight districts identified as backward, out of which six districts never got any share of the CSR funding allocated by the corporates.

Bihar has 13 backward districts and except Aurangabad, which has received Rs 101 crore from CSR funding so far, rest others have received only Rs 20 crore so far from the CSR pool.

CSR fund allocation in backward-districts:  

Source: National CSR Portal, Ministry of Corporate Affairs