In 2013, India became the first country in the world to require corporate social responsibility (CSR), which demands companies spend 2% of their net profit on social development. The results of this mandate have been mixed. The forced co-operation between the nation’s largest firms and civil society organizations (CSOs) in pursuit of inclusive and sustainable development is the subject of the latest book by political scientist Nandini Deo.

The CSR mandate implemented a strategy that India hoped would help achieve sustainability goals and stakeholder activism nationally. Established to promote partnerships that will push the country to meet these development objectives, the ruling instead led to forced philanthropy, says Deo, associate professor of political science. 

“Nobody wanted it,” she says. “All the businesses immediately protested, ‘Why are you doing this to us? Please tax us instead. We don't want to do this. This is not what we do. Just tax us more. And all the nonprofit organizations, they also said, ‘Please don't do this. The corporations don't know anything about this field and we don't want to work with them. We're fine. Thank you very much.’"

Proponents believed that corporations' efficiency and data-driven approaches could enhance NGOs' community knowledge, leading to scalable, outcome-focused programs. However, Deo found that these partnerships are deeply troubled.. Corporations prioritize quantifiable results and short-term service projects, while CSOs focus on community-specific, inclusive approaches that resist the efficiency-focused corporate mindset. This mismatch forces CSOs to adjust their missions to align with corporate interests, which often emphasize quantifiable deliverables over complex social change. Her research offers evidence that CSR is unlikely to contribute to India’s inclusive and sustainable development.

“The more that I looked at this, the more I found that it was really hard to find instances of successful partnerships in the interactions between corporations and CSOs. Partnerships were deeply dysfunctional from the perspective of the NGOs, the civil society organizations,” Deo says. “A lot of it had to do with just these incompatible social forms. They have different ways that they're organized, and trying to make them work together is forcing a marriage between organizations that simply just don't fit together.

“To some extent, I think it's likely a setup for failure,” she adds. “There was no choice. But also one of the things that has ended up happening is some civil society organizations are censoring themselves because they have become dependent on this corporate money. They're policing themselves. They're not being as critical of corporations and of the business-centered economic development that's happening in India. And that is a big threat to democracy.”