MUMBAI - The mind in its purest state focuses on universal welfare, and even if global corporate motives throb some distance from such selflessness, a globally increasing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) includes Asia in its interesting sweep.

So Mercedes-Benz partners with the Chinese government to reduce road-accident deaths, Credit Suisse helps South Asian children in Hong Kong and Metrobank wins the Asian CSR Awards in 2004 for its educational work in the Philippines. India's Gujarat Ambuja Cement also won a CSR Award for rural poverty alleviation and retailing major Hindustan Petroleum won for "Best Workplace Practices". It's a fast-growing CSR list in Asia. Credibility-high Asian companies such as India's house of Tatas entered this CSR list quietly, decades ago, as reflected in a Tata Steel (US$381 million in profit last fiscal year) television commercial in the 1990s that said: "We make happy workers. We also make steel."

Take charity, work-life balance, public relations, human-resource development, advertising, community development, corporate governance, profitability, ethics, goodwill, street-smartness and club them. You get a single, expanding umbrella called CSR.

"Corporate social responsibility should be part of the corporate DNA, not just of the PR [public relations] department," Shalini Mahtani, founder and chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based CSR consultant Community Business, told Asia Times Online. A former banker and accountant, Mahtani's breed of pioneering CSR professionals help corporates see the business sense in a basic law of nature: we get what we give.

With an office on D'Aguilar Street on the edge of Hong Kong's Central District financial hub, Community Business has garnered 19 clients in its 18-month life. These clients pay Community Business a moderate, annual "corporate citizenship" fee ranging from $3,590 for a company with more than 1,000 employees to $385 for a workforce of up to 20 for advise, research and information on CSR.

Propelling the CSR thrust in Asia are networks such as the nine-nation Asia-Pacific CSR Forum and seminars such as the two-day Asian Forum on CSR that Kuala Lumpur hosted this month with the theme: "Driving Forces for CSR - Altruism or Economics?"

CSR means both altruism and economics, according to a worldwide study released on September 10 by leading consultants APCO Worldwide. Some 72% of those polled in the study said they purchased products and services of a company after receiving good CSR news about the company and 60% ditched a company's products in response to bad CSR news. Similar tones ring from the stock market, in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

The big difference is not so much companies donning a "ho-ho-ho" Santa Claus attitude but, as CSR professionals across various continents told Asia Times Online, the compulsions of a global economy forcing companies to see the big picture, or be lost in it. The key shift in understanding is seeing CSR not as some high-flown ideology but as a practical strategy that does more good to the doer. CSR consultants talk delightedly of the positive change they see in employees directly involved in community development projects, of their improved communication skills, ability to listen, empathize, be committed and suffer a less self-centered world view - traits that reduce stress, enhance relationships and increase productivity and profits.

"For me, CSR is a highly personal agenda," said Malini Mehra, founder and director of the Center for Social Markets, an independent CSR organization with offices in India and the United Kingdom. "There ought not to be a lack of consistency between one's personal and professional lives." Mehra blames the hypocritical gap between personally held values and public posturing on the "inability of institutions - be they companies, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], or the public sector - to enable the individual to act in a moral way".

Last year, the Center for Social Markets teamed up with Transparency International to focus on corporate corruption in India. "Our consultations in Delhi and Mumbai revealed a deep-seated cynicism about anything ever improving in India," Mehra said. "Corporate rhetoric was seen as just that - empty words and hot air."

Which is why corporate social responsibility starts with corporate individual responsibility. Farsighted companies such as India's satellite TV giant Zee Network and automobile major Mahindra & Mahindra take CSR to its fundamental core: changing the mental habit-pattern of the employee. These companies send employees to Vipassana meditation courses, an ancient powerful truth-realization technique to purify the mind. Vipassana enables the individual to experience both the self-destructive effects of an immoral thought process and the far-reaching benefits of a wholesome way of life.

Wiser corporate leaders see the dangers of a dysfunctional mind. During the 2000 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, a leading Indian industrialist told Satya Narayan Goenkaji, the principal teacher of Vipassana and a former industrialist himself: "I'm willing to give away half my wealth if only I can get rid of my anger."

Perhaps fittingly, "What should you do when you are angry?" was one of the principal questions discussed by participants at the Economic Forum. "The law of nature is such that one who generates anger is its first victim," Goenkaji told political and corporate leaders from more than 40 countries. He explained how the simple technique of Vipassana, which involves objectively observing bodily sensations with the understanding of their impermanent nature, helps one to come out of anger and other mental defilements.

Society changes if the individual changes. And the individual cannot change without a practical, scientific method to purify the mind. Rapid social change comes when the benefits flow from the top down, which is why CSR has potential to be the most significant human force this century.

Otherwise, CSR lacks credibility when companies that dodge taxes, bribe politicians, exploit employees, cheat customers, play dirty with competition and poison the environment are allowed score PR points by saying they contribute to the community. Mahtani's Community Business, for instance, refused to take on tobacco companies as clients.

"If a company does not integrate social responsibility throughout their corporate practices and culture, philanthropy is simply window-dressing," said Christina Siun O'Connell, director of CSRwire, an exclusive CSR news service based in Brattleboro, Vermont. O'Connell told Asia Times Online that India and Japan are the two Asian countries where CSRwire has the highest number of readers.

In Japan, Sho Ikeda, president and chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Sunrise, says CSR-related talk about the "triple bottom line" often ignores that economic basics are the single most important social responsibility that private enterprises can achieve. "By increasing sales and profits, paying taxes and social expenses, hiring and retaining employees, stimulating the local economy, developing new technology - all of these contributions are the essential part of social responsibility." Ikeda told Asia Times Online.

Nandan Nilekani, CEO and president of India's Infosys - one of Asia's largest software companies - agreed: "As long as we can be fair and transparent to all our stakeholders, show long-term thinking and follow every law of the land, we have done our work well. The softest pillow is a clear conscience." His company puts 1% of its profits ($271.48 million post-tax last fiscal year) into Infosys Foundation, which promotes health care, rehabilitation, education, arts and culture in a drive that adds nation-building to the task of corporate governance. Infosys Foundation runs orphanages, hostels, hospitals, libraries, relief shelters and homes for destitute and mentally retarded women, and invests in tribal welfare.

"Greater public leadership needs to be shown by those at the top so that talk of CSR can be met with credibility, not cynicism," said Center for Social Markets' Mehra. "Walking the talk is harder than mouthing the slogans. We need good walkers."

Raja M is an independent writer based in Mumbai, India.

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