CSR spend trebles in a decade, education & health get lion's share
Jul 8, 2025
Synopsis
India Inc's CSR spending surged threefold to ₹34,909 crore by 2023-24, but remained concentrated in education and healthcare, accounting for over 55% of the total expenditure. While some non-traditional segments like animal welfare and art & culture saw significant increases, traditional areas such as rural development experienced a decline in funding share.
India Inc's spending under its corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations more than tripled in the decade till 2023-24 but the expenditure remained heavily skewed in favour of two sectors, education and healthcare, a trend that became more pronounced in recent years, according to the latest corporate affairs ministry data.
While the overall CSR spending hit a record ₹34,909 crore in 2023-24, education and healthcare together accounted for more than 55% of the expenditure, up from 44% a decade before. In 2014-15, the CSR spending totalled ₹10,066 crore.
The share of these two sectors increased to 48-56% between 2019-20 and 2023-24 from 44-50% in the previous five years.
Companies have about 30 broad development sectors to choose from for their CSR activities. While many companies are trying to diversify their CSR spending, education and healthcare are gaining mainly at the cost of the traditional segments, according to the data.
Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, there was a decline in the average share of spending on rural development projects, eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition, Swachh Bharat Kosh, sanitation, safe drinking water, agroforestry, slum area development, socio-economic equalities and setting up homes and hostels for women from the levels in the previous five years.
Education widens lead
Education accounted for a record 35% of the CSR expenditure in 2023-24, widening its lead over healthcare (20%), thanks to the waning Covid-19 and other public health-related threats.
CSR spending on healthcare had exceeded that on education in only two years-2020-21 and 2021-22-in the wake of the pandemic.
Corporate India has raised its CSR spending on certain non-traditional segments at a much faster rate in recent years than earlier, showed an ET analysis of the ministry's data.
Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, the combined spending on animal welfare saw the highest increase of 310% to ₹1,331 crore, followed by 246% on senior citizens' welfare (₹503 crore), 150% on conservation of natural resources (₹1,536 crore), 144% on art and culture (₹2,840 crore), 137% on livelihood enhancement projects (₹6,961 crore), 137% on vocational skills (₹5,556 crore) and 111% on training to promote sports (₹2,094 crore).
The overall CSR spending from 2019-20 to 2023-24 shot up almost 89% from the previous five years to ₹1.44 lakh crore.
According to rules, companies with a net worth of at least ₹500 crore or annual turnover of more than ₹1,000 crore or net profit of more than ₹5 crore are required to spend annually at least 2% of their average net profit made in the previous three financial years on stipulated social initiatives.
[The Economic Times]
