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DELHI
DECLARATION 2005 AN AGENDA FOR CHANGE As
an outcome of a series of national seminars on governance as the key to
ending poverty and pollution held from 10-18 June 2005 in Palampur, Delhi,
Bangalore & Mumbai, the participants that included legislators, policy
makers, government officials, NGOs, UN and aid agencies, environmentalists,
corporate governance experts, academicians, DELHI DECLARATION 2005 Realising that the biggest challenge of our times is to make globalisation work for the poor, India's Institute of Directors has established a Centre for Social Responsibility. Its aim is to ensure long term business sustainability by advocating equal opportunity to ensure prosperity for all and devising strategies for bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. The Centre for Social Responsibility in association with the World Council for Corporate Governance and World Environment Foundation organised a series of National Seminars of Governance - the key to ending poverty and pollution in Palampur, Delhi, Bangalore & Mumbai from 10-18 June 2005. 650 participants representing public and private companies, NGOs, government organizations, aid agencies, policy makers and legislators attended these seminars. Speakers included former Prime Minister of Sweden, Members of Parliament, governors, legislators, government officials, chambers of commerce, former cabinet secretary, former foreign secretaries, spiritual heads, jurists, academics, social reformers, film makers and CMDs and decision makers from other companies such as SHELL, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, SAIL, GAIL, ONGC, NTPC, HPCL, LIC, ITC, Reliance, WIPRO, Tatas, Birlas, MICO & Maini group. The details are on www.csrglobal.org. Keynote addresses were delivered by Dr. Ola Ullsten, former Prime Minister of Sweden, Dr. Karan Singh, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the spiritual guru and founder Art of Living, Mr. V R Sudarshan, Chairman Karnataka Legislative Council, Dr. Madhav Mehra, President World Council for Corporate Governance and jurists of the eminence such as Justice M. N. Venkatchaliah former Chief Justice of India, Justice N. Ventakchala, Karnataka Lokayukta (Ombudsman). Other foreign dignitaries and UN Agencies that participated included the Ambassadors of Sweden, Nepal, the high commissioner of Canada, several UN agencies including USAID, DFID, World Bank, SIDA, CIDA & Indo German Cooperation. There was a consensus that public attitude to poverty needs to be changed. Poor are not the begging bowls of the economy. They are an immense source of innovation and wealth creation. Companies should not treat Corporate Social Responsibility as an exercise in self glorification but a means to draw the poor into the market economy and improve business bottomline. The governments should withdraw subsidies and use the money for building rural infrastructure. The economic model should be changed to price environmental and human capital. Growth agenda should not be driven through obsessive consumerism but conservationism based on poor orienated innovation for sustainable and eco-friendly development (POISED). Sustainability reporting should be integral part of quarterly reporting and should include the environmental and social impact of the business processes. Economic indices should be juxtaposed with sustainability indices to determine the precise environment and social cost of production. The stock markets should be made more transparent, equitable and accountable so they can work for the poor. Investors should be educated to value socially responsible investments and put a premium on open and transparent companies. The institution of independent directors be strengthened. The internal controls should be aggressively monitored to build investor confidence. Stringent penalties imposed for violation of public confidence. Aid agencies were asked to improve accountability and transparency of aid. Funding criteria and disbursals should be available on the internet for everyone to see. Aid should be linked to completion of projects and donors should be held responsible for timely completion. States should improve their delivery systems to reach poor regardless of caste, creed or political affiliation. Contractual obligations be enforced more stringently and e-governance be introduced in registration of titles to break the village mafia and capitalise the trapped assets of the poor. Banking institutions be directed to microfinance the rural poor and encourage entrepreneurship. Corporate Social Responsibility should form an integral part of the business. Business goal should be to untap the unserved poor markets, innovate products and services for the poor, bridge infrastructural gaps in distribution and build new transaction platform. All this change should be driven through innovatively designed training programmes. The change agenda should be entrepreneurially driven. Women groups should be activated as drivers of change. An 11 step plan called PROACTIVATE was adopted and volunteer groups were formed at each seminar to carry out the change agenda. PROACTIVATE Price human and natural capital Markets based on financial capital alone, cannot tell us the true story. Human capital accounts for 70% of a company's assets and natural capital is even more critical. Wealth creation is meaningless without accounting the costs of human and natural capital and pricing them into the market. All economic indexing has to be juxtaposed against social and environmental costs. Radically increasing resource productivity Natural capital is much more scarce than human capital. We must use technology to maximize the output of natural resources. Our development effort has to be based on deriving 100 times more benefit from the same resource input. Organise public private partnerships to sustain participatory process Socio economic inequalities provide imperatives that create compelling reasons to make poverty a business issue. Concerted action is needed by business, government and civil society to cocreate solutions to help the poor. The key for public private partnerships lies in creating a buy-in for each constituency. Abolish all subsidies and put money in building infrastructure Subsidies are the most pernicious economic instrument. They protect old technologies, help inefficient incumbents and kill enterprise and innovation. Poor need government intervention in building roads, hospitals, schools and for providing water, electricity and sanitation. All subsidies and international aid therefore need to be channelised to building the infrastructure. Conservationism and not consumerism to drive the growth agenda The rabid rate of consumerism fuelled by malls will lead to ecological catastrophe. We need to curb proliferation of products. Our planet is in danger of being cluttered up by half-baked products that leave customers half-longing and half-spoilt. We need to change our growth model. Conservationism, not obsessive consumerism should drive economic growth focusing on POISED (Poor Oriented Innovation for Sustainable & Eco-friendly Development). We should aim towards closed loop production, zero waste and recycling. Transparency and Openness Transparency is the key to public confidence and vital for their involvement of all stakeholders in the change agenda. It is particularly important for the stock market if it has to work for the poor. Corruption should be made a high risk, low reward activity. Everyone should be involved in its eradication. Our system should reward openness and transparency even in failures and punish opaqueness and translucence even when accompanied by success. Improving the access of the poor to the markets and state delivery system The goal of CSR should be to draw the poor into the market economy by innovating products and services for the poor markets. Business should bridge infrastructural gaps to improve distribution and transactional platforms. Valuing 4 Ds - Diversity, Difference, Dissent, Dialogue The equation for wealth creation has changed vastly in the knowledge economy. Value comes not from conformity but dissent, not from deference but difference, not from uniformity but diversity. Variety improves the yield. We must vigorously pursue the diversity agenda in all our work groups starting with corporate boards and include diverse individuals from different sex, caste, creed, religion, race and discipline. Activating women & teenage groups Women being mothers, daughters, wives and sisters are most critical to social change. Female participation is a major criterion for success of the self-help groups. Similarly 2 billion teenagers today are the drivers of world economy. Women and teenagers must form part of any group intended to drive radical change. Training, training and training PROACTIVATE will not be successful unless we drill and educate people in all areas of this action plan. The execution is the key to success of any programme. It is here that most programmes fail. Vigorous training programmes should be developed to effect requisite behaviour change and impart skills. Evaluation Any action plan needs to be constantly evaluated. This evaluation has to be done as a regular measure so that the lessons can be ploughed back to continually improve the model. Centre
for Social Responsibility |