Vague Nods to Corporate Social Responsibility

The promoters of SEZs are, not without good reason, often portrayed as aloof from the concerns that responsible corporate citizens should, ideally, be addressing. This is putting it mildly, of course, since some see the SEZ phenomenon as an intentional method of avoiding regulation and indeed short-circuiting the democratic process. A 2006 paper by Anirudh Burman outlined some of the issues that reside at the intersection between CSR and SEZs in India, though how these will play themselves out in practice is still rather murky.

There are a few indications that at least some SEZ developers are at least aware of the complaints levelled against them, and want to be seen to be taking some kind of positive action. The promoters of Sri City, a 5000+ acre mega SEZ, near the border between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, took the trouble to identify the availability of housing within the residential portion of the SEZ for 'workers' (as well as for executives, who are routinely catered for). But how many 'workers' will indeed be covered? What about those who will be employed in ancillary service industries that will (if the development is successful) grow up around the walls of the SEZ? What options will workers in the informal sector? These and other questions ought to be part of the master plan for the regions in which SEZs are located, but (as the research of Dr N Sridharan, a professor of Urban Planning at Delhi's School of Planning and Architecture, has shown), efforts to plan for such eventualities are rarely seen. (Dr Sridharan's work is one of the components of the research project with which this blog is affiliated).

The firm's public relations presentation to an investment summit also highlighted its concern for the surrounding environment, noting that limited-carbon-impact was its goal. Towards this end, the developers were planting 1 million saplings on the 800-acre designated 'green' area within the SEZ. Whether such pro-environment trappings would be sufficient, given the huge water resources that the industrial sites within the SEZ would require, is open to question. Moreover, as production of automobile components is one of the sectoral thrusts of the SEZ, the project can hardly be called 'green.'