Neither CSR is just about spending 2% of booked Net Profit nor Governance is about finding the
reasons, analyzing the situations and get into the blame game in aftermath of a
calamity by labeling it a natural disaster. If we are to accept that such
horrid things, wherein living beings including citizens get drowned and things
including cars disappear making people feel like refugees, happen because of
the heavy downpour, illegal encroachments and blocking of drainage waterways…
who is responsible for all this?
If nature has changed its
course and behaving erratic of late, climate change is the culprit, alright.
But what causes Climate Change? Is it global warming? Then what causes global
warming? If people are forced to live on banks of a waste-water stream by encroaching
the reserved space, isn’t something wrong with the Slum Rehabilitation and
Redevelopment Schemes? If the natural course of even the river, forget the streams
and trenches, is ‘adjusted’ to suit the ‘development’, who is to blame? If
heavy downpour has caused this, so is the ostensibly compromised Slum
Rehabilitation Schemes, so is the rampant developments carried out with
stakeholder’s hand-in-glove and so is the irresponsible Corporate Governance of
all relevant bodies and regulating authorities who pushed all this absolutely imminent
catastrophe that must have been foreseen in the policy and practice, comfortably
under the carpet.
Social Responsibility
is neither about philanthropy nor is it a way to show your generosity to donate
and offer help and aids - a noble gesture, nevertheless - during an aftermath of a disaster; it is about adapting
ethical practices in purview of larger good, it is about designing, defining
and ‘practicing’ policies for ‘our common future’ and moreover it is about being
proactive about long-term consequences of short-term decisions and actions for ‘instant
gratification’… the biggest enemy of sustainable development.
Whatever Pune has been
put under for last couple of days is neither tolerable nor forgettable, it is
absolutely unacceptable and Punkears who lost their dear-ones, their expensive possessions
and valuable belongings like laptop and mobile phones with loads of important data
directly related to their existence and livelihood, deserve an answer, not an explanation.
And giving that answer by accepting all the wrongdoings that caused this havoc
would be real Social Responsibility!
Please talk, we are listening…
