ON AUGUST 22, 2009, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) hosted the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Summit, 09, organised by team CSR of XIMB. The faculty and students were addressed by an eminent panel which included Partha Sengupta, Vice President, Corporate services, Tata Steel, Ambika Prasad Nanda, State head, UNDP, Sagarika Bose, Vice President, Research, NASSCOM Foundation, Naageshwar Patnaik, Editor, Economic Times and Prof.S.P. Das, Associate professor, XIMB.

Corporate Social Responsibility is intrinsically linked to the concept of sustainable development. It has been observed that communities would prefer and are supportive of companies which they see are concerned with the general welfare of the people more than in the employment opportunities it generates.

In the fast competitive world, corporate houses are coming to Orissa and CSR has taken prominence. The key focus of CSR is to create a win- win situation for both - the firm as well as the society. The very objective of this summit is to deliberate and converge upon a framework by which CSR and particularly RBB (Responsible Business Behavior) activities of firms can be taken to higher levels so that it helps in sustainable development.

Prof. A.B.Ota who was the moderator of the entire exercise set forth the summit by congratulating the students of XIMB for taking an initiative of arranging the summit. He was of the view that various companies have failed to discharge the RBB, because there has been no codified RBB which they can follow and can be held accountable for. Due to irresponsible business behaviour, effective people have developed into development refugees.” We must find out the end results with human face”, he opined.

Partha Sengupta, presented the various initiatives that TATA steel has been coming up with. He showcased ‘Putting sustainability practices into practice’ and how these have been applied in the TATA steel and went onto mention that the philosophy of JRD TATA—“What comes from the people goes back to the people many time over”, still holds great meaning for the TATAs.

Ambika Prasad Nanda, on the other hand, called for collective responsibility to safeguard the environmental rights. He reached out to the students of XIMB requesting them to feel the plight of the affected people and urged them to remember that when they step out of the campus they must speak to their heart and ask whether they are taking a right decision. According to him, ISR—individual social responsibility is higher than CSR.

Sagarika Bose, gave an insight into the perspective of the Indian IT industry and reflected how community investment which includes education , health and environment form the the three key areas of its focus.

Naageshwar Patnaik, cited various examples of corporate ‘irresponsible’ behaviour and how that negligence has been affecting various families. He proposed the reporting of profits by the companies in an open transparent way so as to make companies accountable for their CSR commitments.

Overall the panel disapproved the charity model of RBB—i.e. a response to calamity/disaster and pushed that there should be a model of CSR measures for the corporate to follow. The event was concluded by couple of dance performances viz. Gotipua dance and tribal dance.