CSR

A month or so ago, a small piece appeared on The hindu's front page - six tribals killed in a clash with the police over the Tata Steel new steel plant in Bhubaneswar. The story depressed the crap out of me, i couldnt blv that anyone could be so desperate as to attack armed, trained people with bows and arrows.
But when i went into office, and brought the subject up, one of my colleagues said, yeah it must be politically motivated... some opposition party would instigate these tribals, give them money, whatever (it was state owned land that was given to tata steel) and make them protest. I was left feeling that every issue has varied, deep undercurrents that are just too perplexing to form any kind of judgement.
But one thing for me is very clear - Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the biggest oxymorons around, right up there with 'study holidays' and 'military intelligence'.
And people say that Tata Steel has done fabulous work in Jamshedpur, but the question is, is it ok to shit on one bunch of people if youre going to turn around and clean another bunch? I reckon not. But at least its better than a company like Coke. At a recent meet on CSR, which i had the dubious honour of covering for my paper, Mr Deepak Jolly, who is something or the other at Coke, spoke about how his company had cleaned up a lake somewhere up north and made it usable so that the villagers could come and drink, bathe, whatever. Sure. Just like gold prospecters in America in the 19th century dug up gold just so that they could distribute it amongst the poor native americans.
I was fuming with anger, and the same day i was part of an interection with Mr MV Subbiah = ex-chairman of the Murugappa Group = really big cheese. At some point he was talking about how journalists never write what they truly feel, and i felt the heat rise in me, and i burst out - ya if i'd had to write what i felt about the CSR meet (he was one of the speakers) then i'd have to write just one word - horseshit. Actually, he took it pretty well, told me if you really feel that way, write a blog or something. Well, here i am, Mr Subbiah! (Embarassingly enough, I ran into him the next day at the zubin mehta concert... i wouldve said hi, but there was a really interesting insect on the wall that i was looking at til he went past)
Anyways, two choices - its really easy to go on with life completely ignoring all this stuff. In the city, its really tempting to just shut yrself in, and worry about when yr going to buy a moto razr and if you're gonna get to make out at the next party saturday night... But whenever i do that for too long, i remember the words of P Sainath (journalist with The Hindu, Mumbai), when he spoke at my college. He said - and ill try and reproduce it the best i can - that Nero, the Roman Emperor of 100 AD or 200 AD or whatever, used to hold these huge parties, and at these parties, there was the problem of illumination. How to give these huge open air auditoriums enough light so that his guests could go on with their drinking and orgies? Solution - he used to take a bunch of Christians, crucify them around the perimeter, and set light to their bodies. That provided enough light, i would imagine. And Sainath goes on to say that he was not so much worried about Nero, who was psycho, but more about the guests - how can you just coolly pop another fig in your mouth when people around you are dying horrific deaths? And then he (Sainath) says, ladies and gentlemen, we are nero's guests, we are letting people around us die and we're ignoring it.
I'm not the type of person who has a role model, or is inspired by people, but this one will
always remain with me.
And lastly, recently there was a Business Line relaunch function, all the biggest people in the corporate world were going to be there, and everyone at office was super excited about the chief guest and speaker - Mr Ratan Tata. For some reason, I decided to skip.