While traditional domains like education, health and livelihood have been always dominating the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) space for a long time, sanitation has risen up the ladder to displace them due to the push from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project Swachchh Bharat Mission, launched in 2014.
According to a Government study, conducted by Vision Foundation NGO, on behalf of the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry, in 2015-16, CSR investment in the education sector took a backseat with sanitation topping the list of philanthropic activities of the corporates in public and private sector in the country.
Ironically, the Government study, whose main purpose was to assess CSR investment in the disability sector, found that it always ranked below 10 in the list of CSR activities by the corporates. The study covering India's 100 pre-selected firms (62 public and 38 private) found that 28 per cent of the CSR budget was put into sanitation followed by Education and livelihood (23 per cent each), infra/rural development (18 per cent) and health at 8 per cent.
Prior to the SBM, out of the five top budgeted CSR projects, education topped the list with 32 per cent of the budget going to it, followed by sanitation with 22 per cent while both livelihood and health had 17 per cent of SCR budget each. Infra/rural development took 12 per cent. Disability ranked below ten in the list of CSR activities.
Suggesting that the Government had failed to create enough awareness about the schemes meant for empowerment of the disabled people, the study underlined that while the corporate were keen on CSR activities for the disability, their knowledge about the problem of the people with the disability was limited.
For instance, at least 65 enterprises expressed ignorance about the existence of the disability related institutions in the country while 75 were not even aware about the prominent disability schemes such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay Rehabilitation Scheme, National Institute of the Department, Accessibility India Campaign and Scholarship Scheme for Students with Disabilities.
Also, almost 70 per cent of the companies said that disability was a CSR activity in the past though not reflected in budget proportionately. This indicates low volume of disability projects implemented in an ad-hoc manner spending a small per centage of the total CSR budget, the study said.
Instead of ensuring projects that could go a long way in making the sector earn their own living by providing them jobs, the companies' most prominent preference was in distributing physical impairment and providing aids and appliances followed by rehabilitation, training and research, hearing impairment and awareness about disability. Only 30 companies had put their CSR funds for employment of the sector.
The study reported that while there was a general soft corner for disabilities among the companies, they failed to meet the legally mandated employment target for the sector. "Jobs are not filled up due to misconception that disabled are less productive, apathy and unavailability of employable disabled" while many are not even aware about the possible CSR initiatives for their upliftment.