Where does India's company charity money go? A citizen's guide
The 5-minute version of our CSR research — no jargon, just the story.
What is CSR?
Since 2014, India has a law that no other country had first: big companies must spend 2% of their profit on social good. Schools, hospitals, clean water, skills training — this is called Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR.
It is not charity by choice. It is the law. And it has grown into serious money: ₹40,794 crore last year alone. Over eleven years, companies have reported spending about ₹2.88 lakh crore — roughly the cost of building four bullet train lines.
So what's the problem?
We read the government's own data — every year, every state, every sector, for eleven years. Three things stood out.
1. The money goes where the factories are, not where the need is.
The law tells companies to prefer their "local area." Factories are in richer states. So the money stays in richer states.
Think of it this way: for every poor person in Bihar, companies spend about ₹61 a year. For every poor person in Goa, they spend about ₹64,308. That is a thousand times more. Bihar has one-fifth of India's poor people — and gets less than 1% of this money. Seven states hold 61% of India's poor and receive just 11% of the funds.
Nobody planned this. But nobody is fixing it either.
2. One rupee in five simply disappears into "Pan India."
Over ₹8,100 crore every year is reported with no state name at all — just "Pan India." We cannot tell you which village, which district, or even which state that money reached. That's more than what the 25 smallest states and territories get, combined.
3. We count the money spent. We never count what it changed.
Eleven years of reports. Not one column that says: how many children learned to read, how many patients were treated, how many wells still work. We know the rupees went out. We don't know if they helped.
Why should you care right now?
Because Parliament is deciding this, this very month. A committee of MPs (a Joint Parliamentary Committee) is reviewing changes to this law, and will submit its report in the current session. The change on their table mainly adjusts which companies must pay. It does not yet fix where the money goes, or whether it works.
This is the first chance to amend this law since 2021. It may be the last before 2029.
What we've asked Parliament to do
We sent the committee a formal submission with three simple fixes:
- Keep more companies in, with less paperwork — don't shrink the pool, simplify it.
- Send a fair share where the need is — step by step, a quarter of the money should reach the poorest districts, the North-East, and the hills and islands.
- Make every rupee traceable — name the district, and report the outcome, not just the amount.
What can you do?
- Read the data yourself. It's all public: csr.gov.in. Our full analysis, charts, and method are free at lofl.world/reports — copy them, check them, challenge them.
- Ask one question locally. Ask your MLA, MP, or a company operating near you: "What did CSR fund in our district last year, and what changed?" If they can't answer, that's the finding.
- Share the ₹61 vs ₹64,308 number. Most people — including most MPs — have never heard it. Numbers travel when citizens carry them.
Everything here comes from the government's own CSR portal (11 years of data) and NITI Aayog's poverty index, independently verified. Free to share and reuse — CC-BY-SA. From the Reports series at lofl.world.
Ready to do one of these? Go to the Act page → — a ready letter to your MP, the district question, and the numbers to share.