Compassion: The Essence of Social Responsibility

Back in 2001, just around the time I turned 30, I was still struggling with the decision of what I wished to do with my life. I had an MBA degree from one of the most prestigious institutes in India in my bag, and a few years of corporate experience as well. Yet, the fulfilment I sought from what it takes to earn a living was singularly missing.

Through a series of curious coincidences, I found myself drawn towards the arena of social development and education. By 2004, the needle had shifted considerably – I was heading the direct implementation unit of Pratham (one of the largest charities working in primary education in India) for North India, responsible for the delivery of basic learning to over 200,000 children across several north Indian states.

The past twenty years has been an incredible journey, during which I have held leadership positions in organizations such as American India Foundation, Bharti Foundation, and now, Tech Mahindra Foundation. I have also taken a plunge at social entrepreneurship, co-founded a successful NGO, and helmed another small experimental outfit in Gurgaon that is serving over 250 children. Looking back, the fuel that has held me together and kept me going over these years has been a combination of two ingredients which form the essence of working in social development: Passion, and Compassion. While an abiding passion for working in this space is essential to keep going despite the usual obstacles, it is compassion that really constitutes the secret sauce of social development.

There’s no better way to explain compassion than the opening line of one of Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajans: Vaishnav Jan Toh Tene Kahiye, Je Peed Parai Jaane Re (The true person of God is the one who knows the pain of others). Compassion entails a deep amount of empathy – sharing someone’s feelings – something which all of us are born with but which requires innate sensitivity, along with the right kind of education and upbringing, to be nurtured and sustained within us.
Compassion also transcends any kind of sectarianism or labelling. It is beyond the narrow walls that we have over the centuries built around us – walls of religion, gender, caste and class, that have come to define our contemporary society. In the Buddhist context, compassion extends to all living beings – every living being is not only deserving of compassion, but also capable of being compassionate. This thought must be woven into the genetic code of any intervention that is designed to ameliorate the condition of fellow human beings – which is what social responsibility is all about.

True compassion is not easy to come by. It requires profound self-awareness, denuding one’s ego, and a deep understanding of a larger purpose that we are meant to serve. In my experience of looking at the social sector up close, I’ve realized that the most credible set of people working in the sector are those individuals who are selflessly working for the betterment of their community, their commitment not obscured by the seduction of self-aggrandizement or fame. They live an extremely active life – not on social media or on the seminar-circuit – but assiduously bringing about small and incremental changes in their village or urban community. These individuals, to me, form the spine of the social sector.

It is easy to see why compassion is not usually an ingredient while designing development interventions. Very often – and rather unfortunately – these are designed in the hallowed environment of corporate board rooms or conference halls of the donor agencies, with little representation of the grassroots. Compassion would rarely find a mention in the board room lexicon, where the discourse is mostly about reducing ideas and achievements to measurable, quantifiable indicators. Certainly, there is no denying the value of measuring impact of a social intervention. But when this becomes the focal point of program design, often at the cost of the key human imperative of compassion, the core of what the program aims to achieve is at the risk of getting diluted.

Corporate Social Responsibility in India – with an annual outlay of nearly Rs. 12,000 crore and growing – has the mammoth mandate of demonstrating ways in which significant advances can be made in improving lives. The sector has to choose between the more convenient option of supporting projects that can be orchestrated to deliver quickly demonstrable outcomes, and the more difficult path of investing in projects which call for a deeper churning of the earth before the results would be visible. This choice will be made in corporate board rooms, and unless the values of compassion and empathy seep into the conversation, it is likely that the convenient route will be chosen. But if the CSR decision makers wish to see themselves as harbingers of long-term and lasting change, they must learn to walk the narrow path of embracing compassion as an intrinsic tenet.

The C in CSR needs to stand for Compassionate, and not just Corporate.