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Naveen S Garewal

In recent parliamentary sessions, a familiar pattern has emerged: Members of Parliament routinely seek granular details on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending within their Lok Sabha constituencies. Questions range from development works by specific sugar mills in Valmikinagar, Bihar, to targeted interventions in backward or Scheduled Caste-dominated areas of Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and even proposals for district-level “CSR project banks” in Amroha to align with local needs in drinking water, sanitation, schools, and skills training.

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs responds with consistent restraint: CSR expenditure according to parliamentary constituency is not maintained centrally. The framework under the Companies Act, 2013, remains disclosure-based and board-driven. Companies file annual details in the MCA21 registry, and aggregates — state-wise, district-wise, sector-wise, company-wise — are publicly accessible on www.csr.gov.in.

The government issues no directives on where or how corporates should spend, nor does it track spending by political boundaries or specific communities. This position is not bureaucratic evasion; it is a deliberate design choice that deserves defence.

The intent of Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, was never to create a parallel public funding stream under parliamentary oversight. CSR emerged as a statutory nudge for profitable companies to contribute to society, with boards — advised by CSR committees — deciding priorities based on business strategy, operational footprint, and Schedule VII activities.

A key guiding principle is preference for local areas around operations, but this is advisory, not mandatory. The regime seeks to harness corporate resources for social good without turning CSR into government-directed allocation. Parliamentary constituencies are political constructs, redrawn periodically through delimitation exercises.

They rarely align neatly with administrative units like districts or company operations. Imposing central tracking at this level would demand additional compliance burdens — mapping multi-site projects, verifying boundaries, auditing overlaps — on thousands of companies. The cost would outweigh benefits, especially when district-level data already enables scrutiny of local impacts. More critically, constituency-level granularity risks politicising CSR.

Persistent questions from MPs reflect understandable constituency pressures: elected representatives want visible development in “their” areas. Yet formalising such tracking could foster expectations of informal quotas or invite lobbying, turning a corporate responsibility into an extension of electoral politics.

Evidence already hints at distortions — higher CSR flows in election years or ruling party strongholds. Codifying constituency data might amplify these tendencies, undermining the board-driven ethos and inviting misuse.

Transparency exists where it matters. The csr.gov.in portal offers robust, verifiable data: over Rs 4,000-5,000 crore annually from PSUs alone in recent years, spread across states and sectors. District-wise breakdowns allow MPs, civil society, and citizens to analyse flows and advocate for better alignment with local needs. If imbalances persist — say, in aspirational districts or SC/ST areas — the solution lies in incentives, guidelines, or voluntary campaigns, not central mandates that erode corporate autonomy.

The government’s refusal to maintain constituency-wise data upholds a vital distinction: CSR supplements, but does not substitute, public expenditure or schemes like MPLADS. Politicising it further would blur lines between private philanthropy and state welfare, potentially deterring genuine corporate engagement.

In an era when development rhetoric often outpaces outcomes, resisting micro-political oversight of CSR preserves its potential as flexible, innovative social investment. Parliamentarians would serve their constituents better by pushing companies directly, leveraging public data, or strengthening convergence with government programmes — rather than demanding a tracking system that the law never envisioned and good policy should avoid. include focus keyword in title and throughout the story