Government intervention and corporate social responsibility in India

The change in the nature of relationship between the Indian government and business has been accompanied by a transition in the government's policies for CSR and heralds the rise of the relational state, which embodies co-responsibility between the state, society and public and private sectors. Using an analytical framework, the paper analyses the strategies adopted by the Indian Government in recent years in order to promote the adoption of CSR in business initiatives. A questionnaire survey of 191 CSR personnel, further examines the role of the government in the CSR scenario. Employing principle component analysis to the questionnaire responses revealed that CSR personnel deem the involvement of the government in promulgating CSR through both hard and soft approaches like facilitation, participation, awareness generation, CSR regulation, peripheral legislation and penalising. The paper will be of interest to CSR stakeholders and in particular to governments contemplating a more active role in encouraging organisations, in their countries, to undertake CSR activities.