India has made remarkable progress in institutionalising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). What began as a voluntary commitment is now a statutory obligation. In 2024-25, companies spent a record R40,794 crore on CSR, up 17 per cent in a single year; about 55 per cent went to two causes: education and healthcare.
That is a real achievement. Yet, it raises a question: can we build a good society simply by spending more money?
Consider another indicator. In Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, India scored 39 out of 100 and ranked 91st among 182 countries. Despite strong economic progress, corruption, weak civic responsibility, environmental negligence and social mistrust remain serious concerns.
The problem, then, is not only a shortage of money. It is also a question of human behaviour, values and character. That is where we must look beyond CSR, to a different idea: Personal Social Responsibility (PSR).
A good beginning, not the destination: The Companies Act 2013 requires qualifying companies to spend at least 2 per cent of their average net profits of the preceding three financial years on eligible CSR activities. Schools have been supported, healthcare facilities established, sanitation improved and livelihoods strengthened. These contributions are valuable and must continue.
But education and healthcare spending mostly builds facilities and services and CSR is reported in rupees spent, projects completed and beneficiaries reached. None of this tells us whether society is becoming more honest, responsible, compassionate or trustworthy.
A school can be built with CSR funds. But what ensures that teachers teach with commitment and administrators act with integrity? A hospital can be fully equipped. But what ensures that patients are treated with dignity and fairness? A project can plant thousands of trees. But what stops people from polluting the river next door?
CSR can create facilities and opportunities. It cannot, through expenditure alone, create the character needed to use them well.
The missing dimension of development: We measure GDP, investment, highways, airports and digital connectivity. Increasingly, we measure social spending too. But how do we measure the integrity of our institutions, the responsibility of our citizens, or the respect people show one another?
These are not peripheral concerns. They shape the quality and sustainability of development itself. Poverty and inequality have structural causes that need material solutions, but even well-funded programmes are undermined by dishonesty, indifference and misuse of resources. A nation can grow richer without becoming a better society. This is the missing dimension in our development discourse.
From corporate responsibility to personal responsibility: CSR is institutional and resource-driven. It asks what corporations should contribute to society. PSR is individual and behaviour-driven. It asks how each of us should conduct ourselves towards others, whatever our age, profession, income or position.
What, then, is PSR in its real form? It is nothing but the inculcation of goodness in behaviour. Goodness is the quality; PSR is that quality shown in everyday conduct. Goodness in action is what we call Personal Social Responsibility.
A teacher practises PSR through commitment and fairness. A doctor, through ethical and compassionate care. A business leader, through integrity in everyday decisions. A public servant, through honesty and accountability. A citizen, by respecting others, following rules and protecting shared resources. Each is goodness in action.
PSR is, therefore, not another CSR programme, and it does not depend on corporate funding. CSR mobilises resources; PSR develops responsible people. They differ in purpose and approach, yet they reinforce each other.
But if PSR is to build a better society, goodness cannot remain a moral ideal. It must become practical, teachable and measurable.
Making goodness practical, teachable and measurable: We have institutionalised education, professional training, financial accountability, corporate governance and CSR. We have not systematically institutionalised the development of responsible behaviour. Goodness is admired as an ideal but rarely developed as a capability.
This is the work of the Institute of Goodness. We work on the proposition that goodness can be understood, taught, practised and measured. Our framework rests on five dimensions. Integrity is honesty and consistency between principles and actions. Responsibility is accountability towards oneself, others and society. Compassion is sensitivity to the needs and suffering of others. Respect is treating people with dignity, fairness and consideration. Stewardship is caring for shared resources, institutions and the environment.
A fair question is: who decides what goodness is? These five dimensions were chosen because they belong to no single religion, ideology or government. They recur across ethical traditions and can be seen in behaviour rather than prescribed as belief. PSR is not about imposing a particular morality. It is about cultivating behaviours that help individuals and societies flourish.
Measurement is what separates systematic development from mere preaching. Through the Goodness Index™, we are developing an approach to assess and track behaviours across these five dimensions, so that progress is measured rather than assumed.
From goodness to character: Goodness practised day after day becomes character. A person who repeatedly acts with honesty, compassion and respect does not merely perform good acts; he or she becomes a person of better character. And character, multiplied across millions of people, shapes how institutions work, how public servants decide, how businesses behave and how citizens treat one another. The character of a nation is the sum of the character of its people. That is how goodness in action ultimately builds a better country and a better society.
Character infrastructure and the character dividend: India is investing heavily in roads, railways, airports, energy and digital networks. Another kind of infrastructure deserves equal attention. I call it Character Infrastructure: the collective strength of the character of individuals, expressed in their values, behaviour and ethical conduct, that shapes how institutions, communities and society function.
Physical infrastructure enables economic activity. Character Infrastructure shapes the integrity and trust with which that activity is conducted. Greater trust reduces transaction costs. Stronger integrity reduces opportunities for corruption. Responsible conduct improves public services. Stewardship supports sustainability. I call these collective gains the Character Dividend: the social and economic value a society earns from widespread responsible and ethical behaviour.
Unlike a highway or an airport, Character Infrastructure cannot be built by allocating a budget. It requires sustained investment in people, institutions, education and culture.
What PSR means for education: If character is the foundation, education must build it. Education should not only create skills; it must also shape behaviour and character. PSR should be taught from the first year of school to the last year of university.
The beginning has been made. IIT Hyderabad has introduced an academic credit course on Goodness, proposed by the Institute of Goodness. I taught the first course and more than 140 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled voluntarily.
“Education must go beyond building knowledge and professional competence,” affirms B.S. Murty, professor & director, IIT Hyderabad. “It should also encourage students to reflect on their character, responsibilities and contribution to society. Through the Goodness course, we want our students to think critically about what it means to lead a meaningful life and how their choices and actions can contribute to a better society and a Viksit Bharat.”
But why only one IIT? Such a course should be there in every IIT, for every graduate student, and in every institution across India. Nor should it begin only at graduation. The courses being developed by the Institute of Goodness are designed to be taught from kindergarten to graduation, so that goodness is built step by step, over a lifetime of learning.
Skills make a person employable. Character makes a person trustworthy. A developed nation needs both.
What PSR means for business leaders? Companies are among the most influential places in which adults form and practise everyday behaviour. They are natural builders of Character Infrastructure and there is a business case for it.
A six-month study by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, covering about 1,800 BT call-centre employees, found that happier workers were around 13 per cent more productive. They did not work longer hours; they worked faster and converted more calls into sales.
Gallup’s 2020 meta-analysis of 456 studies across 276 organisations in 96 countries found that business units in the top quartile of employee engagement were 23 per cent more profitable, on average, than those in the bottom quartile.
Where do such engagement and happiness come from? Our proposition is that goodness, consistently practised through Personal Social Responsibility, contributes to sustainable happiness, stronger relationships and better institutional performance. Existing research offers encouraging evidence for related connections. In a well-known 2008 study in Science, Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton found that people who spent money on others were happier than those who spent it on themselves, including in an experiment where participants were randomly assigned to do so.
Indian experience offers encouraging evidence as well. HappyPlus, founded by Ashish Ambasta, says it has worked with more than 100 organisations and over 100,000 employees across India, the Middle East and South Asia, using the principles of positive psychology to promote happier and more productive workplaces. Its approach emphasises positive behaviours, including integrity, trust, compassion, respect and responsibility, qualities closely aligned with goodness in action.
According to Ambasta, participating client organisations have reported productivity improvements of 7-8 per cent, reductions in employee attrition of 12-13 per cent and improvements of 9-10 points in customer Net Promoter Scores (NPS). These figures are reported by the company’s clients rather than drawn from independent academic studies, but they offer encouraging practical evidence that investing in employee happiness and positive workplace behaviour can also lead to measurable gains in business performance.
These studies and experiences examine happiness, engagement, generosity and positive workplace behaviour rather than PSR itself. However, together, they offer encouraging evidence that positive behaviour, stronger relationships and workplace happiness are associated with better individual and organisational outcomes. They also reinforce a proposition: goodness in action, practised through PSR, can contribute to sustainable happiness and improved organisational performance.
Two steps can make this real. The first is to let goodness and PSR figure in the vision and mission statement of the organisation. Unless PSR becomes part of the character of the organisation and not merely a programme within it, the commitment will always be doubtful and that doubt will ultimately dent our Character Infrastructure.
The second is to make PSR part of every employee’s Key Result Areas (KRAs). Today, KRAs ask what an employee delivers. PSR adds an equally important question: how does the employee deliver it?
• Begin with leadership. The top team commits to PSR first and makes it visible.
• Translate the five dimensions into behaviours: Integrity in honest reporting and keeping commitments; responsibility in owning outcomes; compassion and respect in dealings with colleagues and customers; stewardship in the use of company resources.
• Assign a modest weightage: Perhaps 10-15 per cent in carefully designed pilots, assessed through feedback from colleagues, teams and customers as well as the manager.
• Measure conduct, not moral worth: Assess observable workplace behaviours, not anyone’s personal morality or character. The aim is to encourage, recognise and develop responsible conduct, not to label people good or bad, so assessments should rest on clear behavioural indicators and room to improve, not punishment.
• Pilot, evaluate, then scale: Track culture, engagement, retention and performance, and expand on the evidence.
Done well, PSR takes a company’s responsibility beyond its CSR expenditure and into the everyday conduct of its people. CSR remains an institutional commitment; PSR becomes a personal commitment practised throughout the organisation. And it need not stop at the workplace. It must extend to schools, public administration, communities and every citizen.
The next frontier of Viksit Bharat: India’s ambition to become Viksit Bharat by 2047 must extend beyond economic growth and physical development. A truly developed nation will be judged not only by its wealth, infrastructure and technology, but also by the integrity of its institutions, the responsibility of its citizens and the quality of its social relationships.
CSR will continue to play an important role. But larger CSR budgets alone will not resolve the deeper challenges of human behaviour and character. For that, India needs a sustained movement for Personal Social Responsibility.
Just as CSR brought corporate responsibility into the mainstream of business, PSR must bring personal responsibility into the mainstream of everyday life. The challenge is to make goodness not merely something we admire, but something we systematically develop, practise and measure.
India has learned to mandate corporate responsibility. The time has come to cultivate personal responsibility. The next great infrastructure project of India may not be visible from a satellite. It will have to be built inside people.
The author is founder and chairman, Institute of Goodness