Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Monday said the corporates have to step beyond their comfort level in the CSR activities for them to be meaningful.
He added that his great grandfather had said one must give (do charity) till it pinches or it hurts and that is benevolence.
"The bad policy of CSR is that it is made compulsory. So it is a statutory obligation... Unless we step beyond our comfort zones, it is not going to make difference to this country where the best thing our rulers have achieved in doing is creating huge disparities," he said at a CII event here.
It is mandatory for companies to earmark 2 per cent of their profits for spending on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.
He noted that certain cities or villages lack basic facilities like water and get it only once a week compared to metropolises like Mumbai.
"This disparity can only be changed if only the industry, which has the ability to make profits, decides that they are going to take responsibility for that," he said.
Gandhi said the country needs to push the envelope when it comes to innovations and mused that our engineers come out with new ideas or innovations when they are hired by US tech companies but something prevents them from doing the same thing in India.
On governance, he felt that governments have introduced policies but they are not implemented properly.
"The tragedy is bureaucracy itself doesn't know how many policies exist for the welfare of the people...It is not as if we don't have policies, it is just that nobody bothers to keep track of it.
"Nobody in the places of power is bothered how those can be implemented in society. This is the tragedy of our nation and this is what needs to change when we talk about governance," he said.
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