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Stream/Area:
-
Subject:
-
Paper ID:
IJSREM68368
Volume:
10 |
10 |
Oct 2026
Pages:
1-5
Publication Frequency:
Monthly (12 issues per year)
License:International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management follows the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) License, allowing free use and distribution with proper attribution.
School of Law
SRM Institute of Science and Technology
India was the first country to turn corporate philanthropy into a statutory duty, and a decade on, the headline numbers look impressive. What the law checks, however, is mostly money: whether the prescribed two per cent was budgeted, spent, or parked in the right account. Whether a school, a water scheme or a livelihood programme actually changed anything for the people it was meant to serve is a question the law asks only in limited and largely procedural ways. This paper uses the doctrinal method to examine that gap. It reads Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, the Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Rules, 2014 as amended in 2021, the 2019 amendments, the securities-market disclosure regime and the pending 2026 reform proposals alongside the directors’ duties in Section 166 and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on corporate responsibility for social harm. The paper argues that Indian law secures expenditure accountability, offers uneven process accountability, and leaves impact accountability largely to corporate goodwill. It closes with a calibrated set of reforms: wider and publicly disclosed impact assessment, due diligence over implementing agencies, community consultation and grievance channels, and liability for knowingly false impact reporting.
KEYWORDS
India’s CSR mandate has succeeded in making companies spend. That is no small achievement, and the reforms of 2019 and 2021 deserve credit for tightening the rules on unspent funds, agency registration and impact assessment. But a framework that asks only whether money was spent has built a ledger, not a social contract. The weakest layer of accountability is the one that matters most to the people who are supposed to benefit, and the 2026 proposals, for all their merit as compliance simplification, leave that layer largely untouched. This paper has argued that doctrine already offers part of what is needed: Rule 8(3), the BRSR, the directors’ duties in Section 166 and the Supreme Court’s approach to corporate responsibility for social harm. What is missing is connection, a thread joining those pieces so that a failed project produces a question, an answer and a consequence. The proposals above try to supply that thread without making CSR heavier for those who can least bear it. Future research could test them empirically, for example by studying how companies currently describe failure in their impact assessment reports and Board’s reports. The next stage of India’s CSR story should be about whether lives changed, and the law should be ready to ask.
[1] Companies Act, 2013 (Act No. 18 of 2013), India, ss. 135, 166 and 198 and Sched. VII. [2] A. Afsharipour and S. Rana, “The emergence of new corporate social responsibility regimes in China and India,” UC Davis Business Law Journal, vol. 14, p. 175, 2014. [3] Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Rules, 2014, as amended by the Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Amendment Rules, 2021, G.S.R. 40(E), Jan. 22, 2021. [4] A. B. Carroll, “The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders,” Business Horizons, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 39-48, July-Aug. 1991. [5] “India Inc. spent Rs 34908.75 crore on CSR in FY24: National CSR Portal,” The CSR Journal [Online]. Available: https://thecsrjournal.in/india-inc-spent-rs-34908-75-crore-on-csr-in-fy24-national-csr-portal/ [6] D. Dharmapala and V. Khanna, “The impact of mandated corporate social responsibility: Evidence from India’s Companies Act of 2013,” International Review of Law and Economics, vol. 56, 2018. [7] Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, Report of the High Level Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility 2018, Aug. 2018. [8] Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019, India. [9] The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, introduced in Lok Sabha, Mar. 23, 2026. PRS Legislative Research [Online]. Available: https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-corporate-laws-amendment-bill-2026 [10] PRS Legislative Research, “Report summary: Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026,” Aug. 3, 2026 [Online]. Available: https://prsindia.org/billtrack/prs-products/prs-jpc-report-summary
Publication Date
10/26/2026
Peer Review Type
Double-Blind Peer Review
Review Rounds: 2
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The authors declare no conflict of interest related to this research work.
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