The number of start-ups in India has increased The idea of "corporate social responsibility" has taken centre stage in business reporting. Every business has a CSR policy in place and publishes an annual report outlining its activities. Everyone has the right to be able to distinguish between socially conscious action and reckless business behaviour. This raises two intriguing points. First of all, when challenged to define social responsibility, we cannot, in spite of our claims to the contrary. Secondly, we don't always agree on what social duty is. There are numerous definitions as a result; in this paper, we shall examine a few.

A company must meet one of the following three requirements in order to be qualified for the CSR, as per Section 135 of the Companies Act:

 (i) it needs to beof minimum financial worth of five hundredcrore; (ii)It needs to generate a turnover of no less than thousand crore; or (iii)It must achieve a net profit of at least five crore. Furthermore, as per the CSR Regulations,the guidelines of CSR extend to branch and project offices of foreign firms situated in India.

A minimum of two percent of the average net revenue from the previous three fiscal years must be allocated to corporate social responsibility initiatives by all qualified companies. A committee of the Board of Members (Board) comprising at least three members of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee must be established by the qualifying firm. The CSR Committee is responsible for creating and submitting a CSR Policy that outlines the necessary actions to the board. It also monitors the company's CSR policy and suggests how much money should be allocated for the designated activities. When approving the company's CSR policy, the board will consider the suggestions made by the CSR committee.

Objectives are as follows:

1) To recognise what corporate social responsibility is

2) To investigate the issues and challenges related to CSR implementation

3) To discuss the steps that need to be made to deal with these issues.

CSR’s ApplicabilityinIndia

This CSR application is important because it allows companies to take part in campaigns or programs that are connected to the activities listed in the Schedule. By choosing CSR projects that fit with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles, businesses are also given more flexibility.

ActivitiesunderCSR

Some actions the business can take to achieve its obligations under corporate social responsibility include the following: end extreme hunger and poverty; promote education; support women's empowerment and gender equality; reduce maternal and child mortality; combat HIV/AIDS, AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; protect the environment; Make contributions to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fundas well as fund established by federal or state governments aimed at socioeconomic development and relief activities., women, minorities, tribes,  disadvantaged groups, as well as other necessary problems; engage in social business initiatives; and create jobs that improve vocational skills.

Companies’ Outlook towardsCSR

Many companies place a higher priority on consumer satisfaction than corporate social responsibility, viewing the latter as secondary. They argue that today's consumers are mostly satisfied with cost and service, but they fail to take into account major worldwide changes that could fundamentally upend the industry. This change, called "social responsibility," offers a financial advantage. The real implementation of CSR is hampered by a number of issues and challenges.

Problems and Difficulties with CSR Implementation

To begin with, governments have traditionally relied on laws and regulations to achieve business sector social and environmental goals. The examination of voluntary and non-regulatory initiatives has been spurred by a mistrust of rules and a reduction in government support. Second, there is a lack of consensus among local agencies on CSR initiatives. This lack of unanimity often leads to corporate houses duplicating their efforts in areas of intervention. This encourages a competitive mentality among regional implementing agencies rather than cooperative problem-solving strategies. This limitation limits the company's ability to assess the effects of its operations on a regular basis.

Thirdly,when it comes toengaging in or supporting corporate social responsibility initiatives, the local community lacks excitement. There existshardly minimal detailsor information regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the existing communities, mostlydue to the lack of significant efforts to raise awareness about CSR and build local public trust in such programs and initiatives. The situation is made worse by the company's lack of community involvement at the grassroots level.

Fourth, there has also been a claim made that there are fewer well-organised non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in rural and remote areas who can recognize the genuine needs of the community and collaborate effectivelywith businesses toguarantee the effective implementation and smooth execution of CSR initiatives.It reinforces the rationale for investing in local communities by improving their competence in executing development initiatives. Fifth,the absence of explicit policy guidelines or regulatory criteria means that companies' CSR initiatives often lack focused direction.

The extent of a company's CSR initiatives should be based on its size and operational model. Put another way, a company's level of CSR rises as it gets bigger.

program. Sixth,the value of the media’s contribution in promoting successful CSR case studies lies in its ability to spread positive narratives and boost local awareness of different CSR programs and initiatives. Due to the apparent impact of branding exercises and improved visibility, numerous charitable organizations prioritize event-driven programming, they frequently neglect important grassroot efforts

The survey's proposals and recommendations, which accurately reflect the current situation in the CSR field, call for the implementation of crucial actions to successfully implement CSR and establish it on a more secure foundation. This is essential to predict the direction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India and to take proactive steps to make it widely available. The subsequent recommendations are presented for careful and comprehensive evaluation by all relevant parties tooperationalize and enhance CSR initiatives more effectively and reinforce the company's core operations while building valuable networks and collaborative relationships involving all stakeholders, in light of the overall survey results and analysis.

Ways to get past the problems and difficulties with CSR

There are a few things that need to be done to solve the issues and challenges related to corporate social responsibility. First, studies show that in order to improve the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, there has to be a greater public understanding of CSR. This awareness-raising effort may be picked up by a number of parties, including the media, to highlight the admirable work that corporate entities are doing in this area. The public's perception of and attitude towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives will be drastically changed as a result.

These companies will be motivated to participate and effectively tackle issueslike the lack of availability and accessibility ofeducation,  healthcare as well as  employment opportunities for a significant portion of the Indian population through their innovative CSR efforts. Consequently, there would be a greater degree of achievement of the current social justice goal. Moreover, it is noted that community-level implementation of the corporate social responsibility framework is characterised by inefficiency and ineffectiveness when involving all pertinent stakeholders, including the business community, employees, the general public, local communities, and the government.

CSR programs are typically challenging to implement in situations like this. For CSR initiatives to be handled effectively, building strong relationships with all pertinent stakeholders is a problem that needs to be properly addressed. Therefore, in both their current and future strategic goals, all parties involved in CSR efforts and initiatives should embrace an expanded and sustainable structure.

Thirdly, businesses who engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) address issues and conduct activities in diverse sectors, including livelihood, education, health, and women's empowerment. It has been noted that companies often find themselves imitating oneanother's engageinalike projects in the similar regions. The following not only causes challenges but also promotes a strong mind-set and mentality among firms. Given the range of issues and conditions present in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) space, businesses involved in CSR activities ought to think about uniting their efforts to establish a national alliance for CSR as soon as possible.

This alliance, which stands for a variety of industry interests, should embrace a broad development objective and provide the poor and needy with excellent services. Over time, the partnership would transform into a special purpose vehicle, or SPV.In order to raise the standard and volume of CSR initiatives, this would preserve tight cooperation with important stakeholders. Fourth, in order to implement best practices in corporate social responsibility, companies and non-governmental organisations ought to seriously consider pooling their resources and developing partnerships. This will assist them in growing their projects and generating fresh concepts to appeal to a larger group of people.

This will increase the impact that their efforts will have on people's daily lives. After all, both corporations and non-governmental organisations have the ability to assist the public through their various initiatives and programs. CSR programs need to be safeguarded at all costs in order to be scaled up and sustained due to their efficacy and efficiency.

Fifth, cities and other metropolitan regions are the sites of many CSR projects and activities. Thus, these projects have no effect on the poor and destitute in rural areas.This statement is not meant to suggest that urban India is free of poverty and destitution.On the contrary, urban areas also face challenges related to limited access to basic necessities. In addition to concentrating on metropolitan areas, the companies should aggressively review their programs in rural areas pertaining to health, education, female child labour, and female child welfare, since this will directly benefit the residents of those areas. Ultimately, about 70% of Indians continue to reside in rural areas.

Sixth, the government should consider recognising and applauding corporate giants and the non-governmental organisations they work with to implement programs that effectively help the underprivileged and destitute.

Seventhly, in order to raise students' awareness of developmentchallenges at CSR as well as  how it  plays a crucial part  in assisting institutional entities in striking a wise balance between their commercial and societal concerns, CSR as a field of study and research ought to be made mandatory in management schools,business training institutions, colleges , universities and academies. Young minds will be inspired and motivated by such an approach, which will also help them get ready for the difficulties of future development and work towards coming up with more creative solutions to the problems facing the impoverished and those in need. To ensure that young people are involved in civic concerns, business schools, non-governmental organisations, and experts from the corporate sector must be involved.

CSR’s CurrentScenario inIndia

India is the country that has advanced the most. 2013 saw the passage of Section 135 of the Indian Companies Act, which mandates that all businesses that satisfy specific financial thresholds allocate two per cent of the net income average from the past three fiscal years invested in corporate social responsibility.In other words, businesses that generate a total revenue of at least Rs. 5 billion and achieve total sales of at least Rs. 10 billion, or a total profit of more than or equal to Rs. fifty million in any given financial year must ensure that they set aside two percent of their mean net revenue from the three years prior to implementing the CSR initiatives.

To determine how effectively this innovative experiment demanded CSR expenditure and transparency,we studied the information reporting practices of the four largest Indian banks by market capitalization and compared them with those inJapan, China, andAustralia,  where such regulatory requirements are not established.In order to do this, we examined the CSR and yearly reports of the chosen businesses from 2012, the year before the legislation was enacted. Prior to 2012, Indian banks did not have CSR reports.

The banks set up CSR committees that report any reasons for spending deficits and monitor CSR expenditures in accordance with the letter of the law. Among the Indian banks examined, only the State Bank of India (SBI) revealed its CSR expenditures before the new Companies Act was enacted; the other banks only began to disclose these expenses in 2013.

Only ICICI Bank met the requisite amount for CSR in 2017 despite the new legislation requiring businesses of this size to dedicate 2% of pre-tax profit to the initiative. However, it decreased to 1.9% in 2018.In 2018, Kotak Mahindra Bank's pre-tax profits were distributed to corporate social responsibility at a rate of less than 0.69%.

There has been no appreciable shift in the kind of disclosures made after 2013, according to Indian banks' CSR annual reports.Since the existing law is based on the comply-or-explain principle and has little repercussions for non-compliance, it may only be expressive. For the people of India, a country beset by high levels of corruption, low public trust, poor development and education, unstable institutions, and other issues, this makes upholding the law considerably more difficult.

Additionally, it seems that the rules were created with the generally held notion that senior management is solely accountable for moral behaviour and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, omitting the relationship between the business and its primary shareholders.

There is still uncertainty about how the CSR clause fits into the larger scheme of a company's objectives, roles, board obligations, and information that must be made public.Until the regulation is more precise, backed by strict enforcement, and sets penalties for non-compliance, it will neither promote CSR nor compel companies to engage with stakeholders more. Section 135 is only a covert tax that will create unnecessary barriers to compliance

1. Retrievedfrom https://thewire.in/153919/india-legislative-reform-corporate-social-responsibility/
2. Retrieved from http://thecompanion.in/corporate-social-responsibility-issues-and-challenges-in-india/
3. Retrievedfromhttp://www.mondaq.com/india/x/366528/Corporate+Governance/Corporate+Social+Responsibility+Indian+Companies+Act+2013
4. Retrieved fromhttp://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=corporate-social-responsibility--(CSR)
5. Retrievedfromfile:///C:/Users/SONY/Desktop/defining-corporate-social-responsibility.pdf