Topic: Touching Lives

Date: August 09, 2010

Speaker Profile :

Mr. R.K. Singh has 17 years of experience in handling community issues. Graduateing from XISS Ranchi in 1992 with a Masters in Rural Development and a specialization in Project Management, he started his career as a Young Professional in CAPART New Delhi. He joined the Social Services Division of Tata Steel in Oct 1993 and Continues to be associated with Tata Steel. Currently he is working as Head Resettlement & Rehabilitation, Orissa Project. The profile involves charting & deploying processes that ensure measurable improvement in Quality of Life of the relocated families.

Consequentially, two of the most crucial Millennium Development Goals – Education (100% enrolment rate and Zero Dropout rate) & Health (Zero Infant Mortality rate& Zero Maternal Mortality rate) has been achieved for the relocated families.

Details:

Mr. R.K.Singh started the session by asking the student participants about their opinion on relevance of an industry involved in the CSR activities, when the prime focus of the organization is to look at the profitability, from the business point of view as well as from the shareholders’ point of view.

By coming to a mutual consent with the students that Industry needs to work hand in hand with the community, he focused on the prime vision of Tata Iron & Steel Industry which is “creating wealth for the nation” and simultaneously focusing on the CSR activities that TATA has taken up.

He added that the industry should share the responsibility of “inclusive growth” and how global citizens have gone about supporting initiatives to support CSR activities. Referring to this point he gave an example of the Corn Farmer in Canada who not only won the best farmer of the year for 4 consecutive seasons, but also helped the other farmers increase their corn productivity by utilizing the fields attached to its own field that helped in pollination and helped the corns to cross-pollinate.

Further he added that the industries should put the principles into practice and added that not only Tata Steel, but TATA as a group has put the tradition of CSR into their policy, thereby reflecting their seriousness in trying to improve the health and environment.

The diverse fields where they operate include:

The main objective is to preserve the culture and stay available to the needy as and when needed.

Finally he added that the Tata Steel Industry’s vision is to be the benchmark for Value Creation.

He concluded by letting us ponder and deeply integrate the message conveyed by Mother Teresa:

“We sometimes feel that what we do is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of the missing drop”

Mr. Singh was accompanied with Dr. S.P. Sharma, Sr. Manager in Horticulture and Jiren Xavier Topno, Sr. Manager- Training, Tata Steel, Orissa.