Csr

Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring...............goes the alarm clock........."Gosh!...It's already 8! I'm gonna be late to office!" And there goes the (sub)-routine....A quick shot of coffee..a glance at the newspaper....a rushed shower....and finally....after waging a war against all those fellow late-to-office bike mates, the ubiquitous software professional reaches his beloved - his cozy little cubicle! Here is where the rest of the day [and probably night!] is gonna be spent..."Oh!", he'll say, "who wants to go home to nothing? We're better-off here with the AC, messenger, net surfing, coffee n all!". So all he goes home is for catching those [may be literal] 40 winks and wait for another robotic day to start!

This will go on for years, the entry-level engineer turns into a module/team leader and then into a manager and a VP...and finally may be even the CEO of a company! And he retires with those million bucks which are then passed on to the family hierarchy [who are probably already into his own (sub)-routine by now!

Ya, this does remind you of that famous poem "Leisure" by William Henry Davies, right?

"What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare....

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare."

Well, true I'll say, but then in today's world more than those stares at the woods and streams and beauties [!], what we actually need is people who can stare and react at the stark reality of the deprived, the helpless, the underprivileged, who too, like us are ubiquitous.

We're all gifted people - gifted by birth, gifted by education, gifted by knowledge, gifted by the power to positively affect the lives of the people around us! So, how about giving back some of it with some little return-gifts?

And it is this desire to make a difference and give back that has led most corporates today to do their bit for the society, giving rise to the term "Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR]".

"Corporate social responsibility is not philanthropy. It is not charity. It is an investment in our collective future.", says Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India.

Corporates today have to have specific policies with regard to environment, education, social welfare, anti-discrimination