CB BureauIn the 1968 Olympics, seven out of eleven players in India’s hockey team were from the same remote village in Punjab. With a current population of about 4,500, Sansarpur has nurtured 16 Olympians. During its golden era, when the Indian field hockey team won 11 medals (including 6 successive gold medals) in the 12 Olympics between 1928 and 1980, the team had dribbling, drag-flicking and shooting champions from this village. A few minutes’ drive from the once sports equipments-manufacturing hub Jalandhar, Sansarpur has produced more Olympic medallists per capita than any other place in the world.
The place, however, has not been in news for a long time now. The last news I could find while surfing the Web was about it still awaiting the Astro Turf – the artificial grass turf that became a norm in the 1970s – to train players. Leave alone the village, the state of Indian hockey is depressing as the team had once even failed to qualify for the Olympics.
Well, the point here is this: why not adopt such Sansarpurs across India as a part of your corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Alright, public-sector undertakings have been hiring and sponsoring players at national level, but there’s hardly any talk about any company ‘nurturing’ a child to become a champion.
Fundamentally, it is about identifying talents and providing them with basic amenities. Had Sansarpur been adopted by a corporate group (any one of those that are spending millions on sponsoring the controversial India Hockey League), it would have certainly produced more world-class players.
Yes, adopting and development of villages and communities with potential talent do qualify as a CSR activity under Section 135 in the new Companies Bill (awaiting Upper House’s nod) that makes CSR spends mandatory for large companies.
(This CSR idea is one of the few hundred ideas that have been bundled in CauseBecause’s CSR Kit*. The Kit is a programme wherein Team CauseBecause indentifies CSR activities that are in sync with the line of business as also the law, implements the same, and creates a complete sustainability report for the company.)
*CauseBecause has developed a CSR Kit that brings together the process of ideating, implementing and reporting CSR on automation. The Kit is at implementation stage at various corporate groups as well as at a few small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing, entertainment and services sectors.
Interestingly, the Kit does not cost companies anything – rather, it channelizes funds from public relations (PR) and branding departments towards CSR without compromising on the value of either.