Social Inclusion through Affirmative Action Programs under Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study of TATA Steel Limited

Abstract

The Indian economy is benefitted through the huge working age demographic dividend of India but this group of population also became the prime responsibility area for the Indian Government. Indian development is also subjected to criticism for widening the inequalities range. It has been said that to bring long term change in reducing inequality a country must worked upon its employment structure. For reducing the inequality many steps have been taken Indian government in order to boost up the social inclusion scenario. The Indian economy system is incomplete without its private sector and change in employment structure cannot be achieved without the help of the private sector companies. The private sector companies have also taken responsibility and working through affirmative actions in order to strengthen social cohesion and to bring social equity and economic development in India. Many Indian private sector companies have been working on special programmes focused on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Communities youths skill development and entrepreneurship development through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes. This article is developed on the basis of secondary data sources and taken the case of TATA Steel Affirmative Action (AA) Policy and their CSR projects to show some of the best practices in India and its impact on social inclusion of the target groups on the chosen four heads of Employment, Employability, Entrepreneurship and Education under the affirmative action programme of TATA Steel. Although there is an increasing trend for the number of beneficiaries belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) community in TATA Steel CSR projects but their share in the workforce of TATA Steel is still not even one percent increase per year in last five financial year.