South Asia to be leader of the world in this century: Viraf Mehta, CSR Specialist

Viraf Mehta is a social anthropologist by training and has been at the forefront of the CSR field in India since 1988. He was amongst the earliest professionals from the 'social/development sector' in India to translate this interest into formal employment with the private sector with Tata Group from 1986-2000, where he was responsible for overseeing several aspects of one of India's best known models of corporate community investment. He served as the Chief Executive of Partners in Change from May 2002 to March 2010.
During this period Mehta contributed significantly to the UN SRSG's Human Rights and Business mandate, and to the localisation of the agenda in India through the Global Compact and other important initiatives in the country.
BR Research: How did you initially get into CSR related activities?
Viraf Mehta: The reason why I wanted to do this was that in the 21st century, businesses are growing and civil society is essential as a partner. I knew my place would be in a type of place where I would be discussing development with business or the business of development. I wanted Tata to be doing great in every business that it is in, but at the same time I wanted it to deliver and understand what the socio-ethical and environmental commitments demand.
Having worked with the industry and NGO, it made me able to work with the government very closely, take up different projects with companies, cross sector partnership for the first time in India where the NGOs and companies would work jointly for the social cause.
BRR: How are things evolving in India in terms of the CSR and how could we draw a comparison with the West?
VM: I believe CSR is here to stay. It is still fragile, but with the announcement of these voluntary guidelines and sufficient critical mass of companies and the expectations of the society - it is here to stay. Leave the west aside for a moment; I genuinely believe that a country like India, if anything, has an obligation to provide some ethical and spiritual leadership. And I am not talking about saints and faqirs, I am talking corporate, developmental and NGOs' spirituality.
India is a hugely powerfully spiritual country and the leadership in the world, be it the United Nations or any such place, I think we deserve. Take the example of Tata, an Indian company, which invented legislation voluntarily. It is always worth doing it voluntarily and that is the real leadership. That is the reason; Tata is still the leader, even after more than 100 years in the business.
We have to at least do something about the poor in our country. There will always be 100 million poor people in India, but we are trying hard to get the 300 million people out of poverty and that will take dome doing. I think that India is recognising at one level, that it has a role to play. I hope we do not become complacent in that journey.
India, China and Pakistan are the countries which should be solving their own problems rather than looking at what the western world is doing. CSR is a global thing - you cannot confine it to an Indian or a Pakistani thing. For instance, the right of a child would always carry universal values. We have to look at the operational realities and that is where you can differentiate in the procedures of dealing with the CSR activities. We share common principles, but in the operational details, we might differ.
I think India in the recent past has demonstrated leadership in the civil society, government and even the quasi-governmental side and this agenda is here to stay. I think we need challenge from many other countries. We need to be told by other countries that we expect leadership from India and that does not mean bullying countries or imposing our will.
We are a billion people's voices and we deserve to be heard. And it's not one billion Indian voices; it is voices of a billion people who are less privileged. Our richness in south Asia is heartening. We are the brightest people in the world and we know the art of survival. I see the future of this world coming from South Asia - something is going to happen that the world has never seen before.
But to earn that respect and leadership, we have to stay focussed. The journey will not be over in our lives, but we have to play our parts.
BRR: What are the CSR guidelines that you have evolved?
VM: It's whether you adopt it voluntarily or you want it enforced upon you. There is no such thing as one view as to what the responsibilities in the business are. There are very specific responsibilities of business, let's articulate and understand what corporate are supposed to do and how do you not actually define those responsibilities but integrate them in the company, watch and measure the performance and see whether things have improved or not.
The people wanted to standardise the process instead of going into another fine discussion of defining CSR. The direction has to be clear, operational procedures can be easy or difficult, but that's the secondary step. We want to take these guidelines to our region - South and South East Asia initially. We are willing to offer any expertise that the region needs, but there is so much more that needs to be done.
We are devising a mechanism of measuring the CSR performance. We have set specific targets for specific areas and specific companies. Then we will audit whether this is actually happening and then we will say the business contribution in reducing a certain poverty measure was this much. We will also measure if some indicators are going in the negative and then devise set of responsibilities for them.