Leveraging corporate social responsibility for the advancement of development goals in India: The sanitation and cleanliness movement in India

Abstract

CSR is a potent tool in achieving the social and environmental goals of a nation by collaborating partnership with corporations in combating developmental challenges in emerging economies like India. The State Government in India can provide big leap to government developmental programs if they can muster wholehearted support from corporates for implementing social welfare and awareness programmes. This paper makes a special reference to the Cleanliness drive “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA)”, wherein Indian Government identified that the ambit of SBA is vast and utilized the funds and expertise of corporate through CSR to collaborate in implementing programmes such as the construction of toilets, sewage treatment, river cleaning and so forth. This paper is analytical and descriptive in explaining how government and corporates together can shape social demographics of India through CSR by leveraging the value and resources of corporate and utilizing the governmental expertise in identifying the social gaps and accordingly formulating the plans for development to create high impact outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of CSR in the government development plan in India. It explores the intersection of corporate social responsibility efforts and public policy. This qualitative research is based on extant literature on CSR and detailed interviews with government and agencies like NGOs, social enterprises which are involved at the level of identifying corporate partners and implementing social campaigns.