Corporate Social Responsibility

Winning smiles… touching hearts

Long before corporate social responsibility found a place in the corporate lexicon, it was already textured into the Group's value system. As early as the 1940s, the late Mr. G.D. Birla espoused the trusteeship concept of management — investing a portion of the company's profits for the larger good of society. The late Mr. Aditya Birla went beyond chequebook philanthropy when he brought in the concept of 'sustainable livelihood'.

For over 50 years, Hindalco has worked in the hinterlands of India to better the quality of life of the underprivileged sections of society.

Today, we reach out to millions of people in the villages, of whom more than 60 per cent live below the poverty line. Their needs include: access to water, agriculture and sustainable livelihood, healthcare, and education. These four areas form the focus of our efforts.

The company also works to bring about social reform through widow re-marriage and dowry-less marriages.

We work in partnership with government agencies and the beneficiaries to provide these necessities and encourage social reform.

Corporate Social Responsibility Committee

  • Smt. Rajashree Birla – Chairperson, Non-Executive Director
  • Mr. Yazdi Piroj Dandiwala – Member, Independent Director
  • Mr. Sudhir Mital – Member, Independent Director
  • Mr. Satish Pai – Member, Managing Director
  • Mr. Askaran Agarwala – Member, Non-Executive Director

Dr. Pragnya Ram – Group Executive President, CSR, Legacy Documentation & Archives is the permanent invitee to the committee.

CSR Projects (pdf 92kb)

Focus areas

Health care
  • Medical camps: Taking mobile medical units and providing ambulance service to remote areas.
  • Health facilities: Setting up well-equipped and professionally manned health centres at several locations.
  • Regular health camps: Providing family planning, mother and child care and specialised camps for eye care and for cataract; coordinating regular pulse polio immunisation drives; and promoting the awareness, prevention and treatment of malaria, water-borne diseases, TB, HIV/AIDS, and others diseases.
Education
  • Balwadis: Providing for the primary education of underprivileged children.
  • Adult literacy: Providing formal and informal classes and active support to the government's mission to improve rural literacy levels.
  • Merit scholarships / Schemes: Support female students for educational endeavours.
  • Educational support: Contributing uniforms, textbooks and classroom equipment and undertaking school building construction and maintenance.
Skills training / capacity building
  • The Aditya Birla Rural Technology Park (Muirpur, Uttar Pradesh, India): Runs over 70 training programmes in diesel / hand pump repair / maintenance, electrical repair/maintenance, bee-keeping, tailoring, knitting and agriculture-related programmes and encouraging self-employment through income-generating projects.
  • The Yashogami Skills Training Centre (Radhanagari, Tarale, Maharashtra, India): Trains women in skills such as rexine handicraft, fashion design, tailoring, food processing, pottery, lamination, electronics assembly, zardozi, jewellery design, papier mache, rangoli, and fabric design
Women's empowerment
  • Self-Help Groups (SHG): These programmes involve over 11,000 women from rural communities around Hindalco units.
  • SHG activities: Micro credit and micro finance schemes, entrepreneurship building, oil-processing units, tailoring centres, horticulture and nutrition gardens, diesel and hand pump repair, vermi compost production, mushroom cultivation, food processing, etc.
  • Awareness building: Health and sanitation, family planning, literacy drives and microfinance; facilitating government loans for small-scale enterprise and rural insurance schemes, etc.
  • Social causes: Promoting dowerless marriages and widow re-marriages.
Agricultural support
  • Irrigation schemes: Land brought under irrigation with better yield and multi-cropping methods
  • Watershed development: Hydel towers, drainage canals, wells, check-dams, pedal pumps and harvest tanks. Training: Field schools train local farmers in modern agricultural techniques for higher crop yield; introducing lac cultivation, post-harvest technology with safe grain storage through an integrated pest-management system, floriculture, horticulture and kitchen gardens; shifting from mono to multi cropping patterns and distribution of high-yield seeds.

Corporate Social Responsibility policy (pdf 788kb)

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