Corporate Social Responsibility vis-à-vis Anna Hazare’s Fast

During the ICC cricket world cup extravaganza 2011 in India, a number of companies participated as sponsors. After the final match in Mumbai on April 2, the dais had dozens of ‘corporate logos’ displayed where prizes were announced for India and Sri Lanka teams. After 3 days at Jantar-Mantar in New Delhi, Anna Hazare began his fast against widespread corruption in Indian system. The public started pouring in at Jantar-Mantar to support Anna Hazare. There was a dais too but no corporate logo was seen. The Indian as well as multi-national corporations do not mind spending or wasting money like water (they might call it as “investments”) in the name of cricket. However, one wonders why no company arranged even drinking water for the same people (the end users) who are targeted by these companies for their products and services. Not even a single company which is involved in bottled water business (e.g., brands like Bisleri, Aquafina, Kinley, Bailley, etc.) cared to supply water to the people who were gathered at Jantar-Mantar in summer. Supplying drinking water to quench people’s thirst is considered as a socio-religious activity in this country. During the summer even small local or regional businesses take care to get involved in their cities to make drinking water available in earthen pitchers on roadside shades.

Many activists were fasting to support Anna Hazare. There are other brands too which sell bottled mango, orange, or lemon drinks such as Mazaa, Slice, Mirinda, Minute Maid, etc. These companies spend exorbitantly on mass media advertising. Some of them pay heavily (millions) to each celebrity as their brand ambassador – whether they are cricketers or film actors and actresses to convince and lure the consumers. But these companies were clearly found to show their reluctance to spend peanuts on consumers (supporting Anna’s movement) in comparison to their expenses (millions and billions) made on celebrity endorsements and media advertisings. It is quite obvious that none of the companies (water, soft-drinks, national or multi-nationals, etc.) has any interest in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But these companies are more than willing to spend by sponsoring the world cup cricket to accelerate the use of their products multi-times by the consumers. Surprisingly, the same consumers were ‘totally ignored’ when a rare opportunity came to show through media without spending anything on TV channels that any company and its brand actually “care for its consumers and society”. None of the companies has shown any signs of CSR in presence of ample opportunities all across India for 5 days during Anna Hazare’s fast which was widely covered by TV news channels and broadly viewed daily by the millions of viewers who were consumers. 

Any sensible person can deduce: 

1) All these corporate houses in India are really suckers who only believe in squeezing the consumers; 

2) None of the companies wanted to show they were anti-corrupt by supporting Anna’s movement in any form – including through CSR since all these companies indirectly gave a message that they were pro-government and pro-politicians, no matter even if a consumer or a group of activists considers the corporate houses as pro-corrupt which is quite evident from the recent ‘2G telecom scam’.

~ Gunjan Gupta, Esq.