Anant Nadkarni, General Manager, Group Corporate Responsibility, for the TATA Group, one of India’s greatest industrial houses, today gave a presentation of his company’s long-running and successful efforts in corporate social and community responsibility.
Tata Group is known worldwide for its social welfare policies and has been practicing them since its very beginning, for nearly a century.

J.N. Tata, founder of the Group, was the first to recognize that the good of the community, and not just profits, should be the main purpose of any company’s existence, Nadkarni said. He emphasized the company’s priority: ‘people first’. This meant that market mechanisms had to be adjusted and made compatible with the company’s social responsibility, and not the other way round.
Institutions must involve everyone concerned, Nadkarni said. He noted that over the years Tata executives had realized they needed to see beyond management and organization; that putting people and social reforms above anything else made for better business results in the long-term. This way of seeing the role of business required building strong relationships both between the company and the community as well as within the management of the corporation itself. ‘For markets to work at all, the underprivileged must participate,’ Nadkarni said, explaining the foundations of Tata’s business strategy. ‘Communities,’ he said, ‘are the central aspect of any issue’.
The Tata Group had started off with the core value of the good of the community, and has ever since been evolving and finding new ways to fulfill that responsibility. These include many social reforms the company has initiated, including in healthcare and education facilities.
At some point, noted Nadkarni, everyone started admiring Tata for their approach to business. ‘Tata is so good for this,’ they said. ‘But good wasn’t good enough,’ said Nadkarni. ‘We wanted to be great.’ The corporation initiated a new way of business thinking, a new business model. Above everything in which the company aims to improve over the years — such issues as Leadership, Strategic Planning, Market Focus, Human Resources, Management, and Business Results—lies the good of the community. Tata’s people-focused approach was illustrated in the company’s advertising slogan: ‘We also make steel’.
Nadkarni announced that Tata is now the first company in the world to implement a sustainable human development index, submitted last month to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Human excellence is the end purpose of all Tata managers’ activity.
Nadkarni ended by quoting from Sir Edmond Hilary: ‘It is not the mountain we conquer, it is ourselves’. This demonstrated that Tata hasn’t given up its efforts in building communities beyond profit, initiating a new way of doing business.
Edward Bickham, Executive Vice-President for External Affairs for Anglo-American mining corporation (185,000 employees in 50 countries) presented the social dimension of sustainable development in his company. Anglo-American was founded in 1917 in South Africa and is now based in London. Most of their resources (including gold, coal, and diamonds) lie in South Africa, but also Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia.
‘There is something in the history of bad relationships between communities and mining complexes,’ Bickham admitted, especially when it came to environment preservation. ‘Mining is more than leaving a hole in the ground,’ he said. Today the company is engaged in the treatment of employees suffering from HIV/AIDS—24 per cent of the workforce, ‘who are bound to die of the disease in the next 5-10 years,’ Bickham said. Anglo-American tackles the problem by partnering with NGOs and local communities in their efforts to treat and, where possible, prevent the spread of the disease.
In 1998, Anglo-American adopted the Global Mining Initiative, which helped to align the company’s policies specifically to Sustainable Communities Development. After participating in last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, Anglo-American put special emphasis on partnerships with civil society groups. In 2002 the company adopted a set of Good Citizenship Business Principles. The company’s main purpose since then has been seeking engagement and dialogue with communities. Because Anglo-American operates in 50 countries, building relationships with local communities is a very complex and demanding task, as expectations and government policies vary from place to place. Community relations activities are no longer considered optional. Communities are invited to participate in whistle-blowing when they think the company has done something wrong, as well as in complaint procedures. Employee volunteering and capacity building programs as well as councilling to smaller businesses in the area of sustainable development are also provided. A special program called Zimele deals with empowering the black community with job opportunities. Income creation projects have been initiated in South Africa, Brazil and Colombia.
Bickham concluded with a very optimistic view of his company’s social policy: ‘Effective community engagement, dialogue and partnership are fundamental for our business development in the areas of risk management, long-term access to resources and corporate values.’
Improved housing contributes to building sustainable communities, said T K Somanath, Executive Director of the Better Housing Coalition in Richmond, Virginia. His is a recognized voice in community and economic development, both on the national and international scene.
Somanath began with an overview of the state of the planet, including overpopulation and environmental destruction, and followed this with a closer inspection of the situation in America. US citizens consumed 40 per cent of the world’s gasoline, and the average American produced twice as much garbage as the average European, he said. From this global perspective, the speaker moved on to his local experience.
The Better Housing Coalition recognizes the role of nature in economy, he said. ‘Sustainability involves the challenge of integrating human activities into the eco-system upon which we all depend.’ The BHC invests in better neighborhoods by building affordable homes for less privileged citizens. The aim of BHC has not been to interfere with existing government or volunteer programs, but simply to enrich them in areas of physical revitalization, social revival, and quality housing management.
BHC does not raise money, build housing, and then leave, Somanath emphasised. In the Winchester Greens project, for instance, apart from affordable renting units, a senior housing facility and a child care center (accommodating 140 children) have also been built for the needs of the community. New houses have porches, so that parents can keep an eye on their kids playing on the new sidewalks. Playgrounds are designed to ensure the safety of the children. Little league sports and boy scout troops are forming. Now, a 30,000 sq ft grocery and retail center is also being developed. All this has led to a dramatic decline in the crime rate in the Winchester Greens area.
These efforts not only contribute to a revival of community life, but also increase awareness of the need for better housing on a larger scale. The BHC has developed volunteer programs, in which neighbors as well as professionals are encouraged to participate in rebuilding the shape of communities.
The work of BHC is anything but done, stated Somanath. Much had yet to happen to make Richmond a fair and people-friendly place to live in. In the state of Virginia, 400,000 families face housing problems, he said. Nationwide, 14.3 million households spend more than half their income on housing. Households with only one full-time wage earner on the minimum wage cannot afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the USA. In spite of this, sustainable community development remains a low priority among the philanthropic community, concluded Somanath.
Somanath quoted the anthropologist Margaret Mead: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.’ One can only hope that more people around the world will learn from their astoundingly positive experience of the Better Housing Coalition. http://www.cauxinitiativesforbusiness.org/home.htm

Joanna Margueritte