Skip to main content

Corporate Social Responsibility lessons from The Mahabharata

We all have heard the story of Bhimsen and Bakasur in Mahabharata. We all know how Bhimsen, during the Agyatwas ( Incognito existence of a year) stayed in a town plagued by the demon Bakasur. And how, he used his power to slay the demon and freed the town from the atrocities inflicted by the demon Bakasur.

How does it connect with CSR?

Well, Bakasur symbolises the social and economic evils in the communities companies operate in. And Bhimsen symbolises the corporates who have resources to manage such challenges. 

Therefore, CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility could be the method by which Companies can beat social evils faced by their communities, just as Bhimsen killed Bakasur and freed the community that sheltered him and his family when they needed it.

What I see here is a symbiotic relationship. The communities have something to offer to the corporates and the corporates have something to offer to the communities. It is this mutual relationship that can help both the communities and companies prosper. 

More than five thousand years back we had the solutions that we seek now. Interesting insights from our mythologies that can help us learn to build more inclusive communities and societies. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Humanity is lost!

We lost ourselves when our quest was overtaken by greed. First, we wanted to learn - the earth, the oceans, the skies and then we wanted to own them. We invented toys of mass pleasure and mass pain. We got religion and creed. And we got lost in all these. We stopped being the wanderers who wanted to cherish nature. Enjoy it's gifts.  We started challenging the almighty the creator. We lost. We are dying as a race. Dying with the burden of civilization that offers only stress and agony of loans. Sitting in one position we are destroying our body the greatest gift of nature. We don't deserve to be called the smartest of all species. We are the most idiotic of all. We are dumb. AI is taking over. We will be lost in machines soon. They are our future. We cease to be us soon. God bless us!
Post a Comment
Read more

Nature calling!

There is a tiny little compass within us, our conscience, the keeps giving us signals. There are times when it keeps warning us of the dangers of the city life we are living. It gives us hint of being at home when we are in the middle of nature. We are all like tiny parts of the nature we are so foolishly moving away from. And that's why we feel so much at home when we go to these places. We are parts of them - the air, the water, the soil, the fire that makes us us. Not the iphones and fancy toys we are so attached to these days. Let's make it a point to live closer to nature. To breathe pure air. To drink water unadulterated by modernism. To think thoughts that are pure and in tandem with the cosmos. There is a monk within us. Why do we hide him? Why do we not listen to him? We must. Before it's too late!
Post a Comment
Read more

Humanity you chose wrong!

The caves were dark. Suffocating. But the journey outside the caves has pushed mankind into deeper darkness. It is because we have probably made the wrong choices as a race, together. We are all partners in the crime and the victims too. We should have been driven by 'need' but we chose 'greed' to drive us. The clear skies over our heads , bright sunshine and the twinkling lovely stars, showed us the way to eternity but we chose to hear our own self -doubts. We dulled our insecurities by preying on the weaker species in an attempt to feel powerful. We hid behind our science toys to take on the mighty nature. Look at us now! How miserably failure we have turned out as a race. We have killed the nature with our little experiments and excursions trying to justify as progress... Put you hand on your heart...have we really progressed...other than discovering better toys to keep ourselves mused, have we really achieved anything worthwhile, we the humans? We still can'...
Post a Comment
Read more