ROLE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN PROMOTING CSR

Commerce

In the recent years the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is spreading very rapidly all over the world. Corporate Social Responsibility means to contribute towards the society while working with in ethics. In developing country like India, banking sector plays a very important role in upgrading the economy of the country not only by lending money or increasing the liquidity in the country but also by imposing a new practice called corporate social responsibility (CSR). RBI played an important role in supporting the concept of CSR by passing a circular in the year 2007, December, directed banks to undertake CSR initiatives for sustainable development. This paper tries to enlist various areas under which CSR initiatives has taken by the banking sector in the current era. The study also analysis the CSR activities carried out by selecting banks, i.e. HDFC bank, ICICI bank, SBI bank, PNB and Bank of Baroda. It has been found that selected banks are directly engaged in CSR practices like educational welfare, health, women and children’s welfare activities, Rural development, environment protection etc. Data are collected from the secondary sources mostly from Bank’s web sites, and other secondary sources. The analysis shows that, banks are making efforts for the implementation of CSR as business model. The study concludes with that after the involvement of RBI, corporate social responsibility becomes the important part of Indian banking sector, but still more regulations and new policies are required to implement the concept of CSR in Indian banking sector, only then, concept of CSR be fulfilled.

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