India releases voluntary CSR guidelines

24.12.2009, at the end of the Corporate Week, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in India relesased a voluntary guidelines on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. These brief documents refers to Global Compact ten principles.

In his speech, the Corporate Affairs Minister, Jai Hind said:

On the one hand, we have urgent development concerns like poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition etc. that remain the cause of the non-inclusion of a significant section of our people from the welfare mainstream. On the other hand, we have global challenges like climate change which raise a question about the long term sustainability of human kind. The scale of these challenges warrant a collaborative solution in which the Government, the business sector, the civil society organizations and the common citizens need to partner. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs is addressing these issues by providing an enabling environment in which the corporate sector can not only grow and flourish but also bring more and more sections of the society within its value-generation process. It is with this objective in view that the Ministry has chosen the theme of India Corporate Week , 2009 as “Corporate Sector and Inclusive Growth”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility are the two mechanisms through which this objective can be suitably and effectively addressed. In the context of long term sustainability of business, the current thinking has blurred the distinction between the Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility and they have become a part of what is often referred to as Responsible Business. Nevertheless, Corporate Governance is referred to as a set of Rules, Regulations and Practices that guide the governance of the affairs of a company in a manner that makes the business ethical, transparent and accountable to its shareholders. On the other hand, the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility guide the governance of a company in such a manner that businesses become accountable to the stakeholders beyond the ownership of the business.

Corporate Governance Guidelines [PDF]
Corporate Social Responsibility Guidelines [PDF]
Ministry of Corporate Affairs in India [HTML]

Source: CSRinfo