By Narayanan Madhavan (Hindustan Times)

New Delhi: Customers love it, employees love it and shareholders love it. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) may sound like a born-again expression to describe old-fashioned philanthropy, but for many business leaders, it is increasingly about making capitalism more acceptable to society at large.

Rajashree Birla, director, Aditya Birla Group, said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday that CSR could be used, as her group had done, to empower the less privileged by doing everything from housing for the poor to helping vocational education that creates jobs, while winning over the affections of the community in which a business group functioned.

She said corporates needed to get down to work, avoiding “chequebook philanthropy”. She traced the origin of her group’s latter day CSR to the trusteeship model of capitalism advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and pursued by the Birla business empire’s founding patriarch, the late G.D. Birla, who built educational institutions like the BITS in Pilani. “I would urge you to subscribe to compassionate capitalism,” she said.

Harish Manwani, president of Unilever Asia & Africa and chairman of consumer goods giant Hindustan Unilever Ltd, said his company had built its social work around its brands. Lifebuoy soap was linked with the largest programme of its kind on the promotion of washing hands for health and hygiene, while Project Shakti empowered poor rural women by building income programmes around the selling of soaps.

He defended his company’s efforts to build philanthropy to help empower women by naming a charity after its controversial facial cream Fair & Lovely, criticised by some women’s groups for promoting fairness of skin as a virtue.

He said brands had an emotional, social and functional footprint. “I don’t see anything sinister about it. If corporates don’t do it in an ethical and transparent way, it won’t work.”

“It is quite clear that corporate social responsibility has to be included in the definition of success,” said Tejpreet Singh Chopra, president and chief executive officer of General Electric’s Indian unit, who moderated the session.

Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of software giant Infosys, said corporate leaders must boost personal philanthropy by corporate leaders, as it has happened in the US, in order to prevent criticism from shareholders about diversion of funds for pursuits other than profits. “Companies cannot go beyond a point on philanthropy,” he said.

Email: madhavan.n@hindustantimes.com