Corporate Social Responsibility seems to be the term of the day for an emerging corporate India. As corporate citizens, people seem to be more than willing to come up with innovative models for the up-liftment of society, using their own resources. Starting from teaching the underprivileged children, to sharing resources with flood victims, to green planet fundamentals and to whatever else the organization feels it can give back to the society, everything is being done today.

So, now, a natural questions arises: Why were we not responsible towards the society, as individual citizens, earlier? Were all the people who pull up their socks now, and work towards the aim of corporate social responsibility not responsible as individuals earlier?.

There can be two answers to these questions.

A few people who felt responsible earlier were contributing to the up-liftment of society using whatever little means they had. Some of them donated money to NGO’s that helped underprivileged students, while others took classes over the weekends to help the NGO’s in the field of education. And that was not all, there were people who tried to help others by doing whatever little they could, in whatever form they could, while the rest continued to enjoy living a life of ease and comfort.

The second school of thought feels that it is difficult for an individual to achieve much, and it needs a collective pull to convert all the people in a community into responsible citizens of the society. The organizations and corporations, therefore, are in a much better position to initiate such a process, and turn their employees into socially responsible citizens.

The important question, however, still remains: Why are we not individually responsible to live as socially responsible citizens? Do we always need a collective cause to pull us towards responsibility?

There’s a proverb which says, “For a nation to prosper, each citizen has to be accountable to his task rather than communities being accountable to their task”. Communities here refers to various groups of people, and in our current context we can consider organization, companies etc as communities. So, to really take a country forward whatever we do in the name of the organization has to be carried out individually too.

The best place to start is the home. If we accept the responsibility of being moral citizens in all the activities of our day to day life, it will automatically be reflected in our offices, and then on the nation as a whole. Working collectively for higher benefits to the society is commendable, but working individually towards the good of all is even better.

So, pause for a moment and think. How many of are ready to be individually responsible for the activities we carry out and be a socially responsible citizen, rather than have a collective pull through Corporate Social Responsibility.