Dear minister, CSR is not a substitute for governance

We should salute the courage of rare outliers like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw as she stands up for social good and civic integrity

When a senior minister tells a leading business leader to “take up some CSR work in your area” after she raises civic concerns, it exposes a worrying drift in public accountability. But then, one even wonders if it is foolish to expect accountability from our politicians anymore.

It is not just about a tweet or a bruised ego. Indian corporates have learnt it long and hard, not to have ego when dealing with political, bureaucratic, and judicial systems. But, rather, it is about the growing and dangerous belief among our political class that the responsibility for maintaining our cities, fixing our roads, and ensuring basic urban liveability can be outsourced — to corporate benevolence, to citizens’ patience, or to divine luck during Monsoon.

Almost every politician speaks of grand new projects worth thousands of crores and promises a dazzling future a decade away, but few seem concerned about fixing what already exists. The daily frustrations of citizens, the decay of basic civic infrastructure, and the neglect of suburbs that also define a city never make it to the speeches or the manifestos.

In Bengaluru, as in other Indian metros, the story repeats itself every election season. Grand claims of transformation abound. We are told our cities will soon resemble Singapore or Shanghai. In reality, they resemble war zones. Potholes masquerade as roads. Traffic crawls like a wounded creature. Garbage piles compete with political sycophant billboards. Year after year, crores are spent by municipal bodies on 'road repair’ and ‘drainage improvement’, yet citizens continue to suffer the same indignities.

For a senior minister to suggest that a corporate leader use her company’s CSR funds to repair her neighbourhood is not just tone-deaf. It is sheer insensitivity — an unacceptable ‘Lord and Master’ attitude, unbecoming of decision-makers whose apathy hurts the daily lives of millions of city dwellers.

It also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what CSR is meant to do. Corporate Social Responsibility is not a replacement for government responsibility. It is not a magic purse that should fill the void left by administrative neglect. The law mandates companies to contribute towards broader social good — like education, health, skill development, environmental care — and not to compensate for civic mismanagement.

If public leaders start treating CSR as a financial patch for government inefficiency, we are walking into a moral quicksand. It blurs the lines between duty and donation, between governance and goodwill. It also sends the wrong message to industry — that their role is not just to create jobs and pay taxes but to shoulder the burden of what government departments fail to deliver. Such an attitude will discourage industry participation, distort the spirit of entrepreneurship, and reduce public policy to charity.

The problem runs deeper than one minister’s retort. It reveals the hollow core of our political imagination. We have state leaders — none less than the powerful and go-getter deputy chief minister — who claim helplessness before a so-called “garbage mafia”.

We have city planners who cannot build a kilometre of road without triggering chaos, and a revised plan as an afterthought. We have projects whose timelines have moved from months to years to their next decade, shamefully. We have leaders who invoke 'vision documents’ of turning our cities into Singapore, even as citizens wade through knee-deep water every Monsoon, while politicians blame Nature for it. We have municipal budgets that run into thousands of crores, with little to show for it on the ground.

Citizens are told that corruption is being eliminated through digital processes. Yet anyone who has dealt with civic contracts knows how sanitised the system has become. Every tender, every project, every layer of billing passes through a well-lubricated chain — technically legal, expertly documented, and blessed by auditors and lawyers. The result is a system where everyone is protected, except the citizen.

The irony is painful. India’s entrepreneurs, who take real risks and pay real taxes, are being asked to fund what their taxes should have already delivered. Businesses should not have to choose between silence and shaming. They should be free to demand better infrastructure, because without it, productivity, safety, and quality of life all suffer. Bengaluru, India’s proud technology capital, loses crores of rupees daily in lost hours and citizens’ health due to traffic gridlocks and poor road conditions. That is an indictment of self-serving political and policy leadership.

It is not charity that keeps a city alive, but character. When duty becomes optional and conscience becomes corporate, democracy loses its meaning. India’s urban crisis is not a shortage of funds. There is a shortage of accountability. Every citizen who pays a tax, every entrepreneur who creates value, and every worker who navigates a cratered road has already contributed their share. The least they deserve in return is a city that works.

The blasé attitude of political leaders who expect corporate figures to dip into company funds for what is essentially the duty of political and administrative systems is nothing short of shameless. The political trolling of business leaders who dare to speak up must also stop, for it corrodes public trust, and drives global investor confidence lower.

We should instead salute the courage of rare outliers like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, whose moral spine remains intact, as she stands up for social good and civic integrity. The silence of industry in other metros, including Mumbai — the commercial capital of India, only deepens the contrast — where even those with the most at stake seldom voice the need for better municipal governance.

Until that changes, our cities will continue to choke on promises and potholes. Citizens will keep asking, not unreasonably — if taxes, votes, and patience are not enough to earn a decent road, what will?

Srinath Sridharan is a corporate adviser and independent director on corporate boards. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.