Shri. Niraj Kumar Lal is the Group Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Arvind Limited and brings two and half decades of experience in Corporate Social Responsibility. His domain includes health education, skill development and slum networking. He is a member of CII National Committee on CSR and Convenor of CII Gujarat State Panel for CSR and Social Inclusiveness. Mr Lal has facilitated collaborative relationships and partnerships between the Industry, Academia, International Development Agencies and Consulting organisations for greater productivity and holistic development.

In an exclusive interview, Shri Niraj Lal shares with Marie Banu about Arvind Mill’s CSR programmes

Arvind Mills and its Swadeshi spirit?

Our vision is deeply embedded into the independence struggle.  Before becoming pioneers of denim in India, Arvind began its journey in 1931 in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for Swadeshi. During the struggle for Indian Independence, the Lalbhai family founded Arvind Mills, creating capacity to compete with the world’s finest textile mills. Three brothers, Kasturbhai, Narottambhai and Chimanbhai, came together to produce international quality fabric using superior quality Indian cotton to support in the freedom struggle. 

Arvind’s early years in the CSR space?

CSR for Lalbhai Group has been in practice even before the term ‘CSR’ was coined. If you look at the educational advancement or the cultural and social milieu in Ahmedabad, our founders have contributed greatly to its development. We have been bringing people together and setting up institutions of importance because we believe that institutions are the actual founding stone for any society to grow.

Our founding father Shri. Kasturbhai Lalbhai had set up Ahmedabad Educational Society with a group of local industrialists. This Society runs schools, colleges, technical institutions, besides social, cultural and religious institutions. Ahmedabad is a city of institutions, and you will see our footprint in top institutions like IIM Ahmedabad, Centre for Environment Planning and Technology, Physical Research Laboratory and many others. These institutions are backed by industry leaders who believed that the importance of a vibrant city and its growth can only happen if you have a strong institutional base.

Our CSR policy is based on the belief that  healthy businesses prosper in a healthy society and Business leaders have a huge role in shaping the socio-cultural development of a geography.

Talking about our early social programmes, Narottam Lalbhai Rural Development fund (NLRDF) was launched by Arvind Mills as a registered NGO in 1978. This was basically to take care of the rural development programmes aimed at promoting and strengthening livelihoods and welfare and development of rural communities across Gujarat. NLRDF was instrumental is setting up educational institutions, health infrastructure, hospital, technical institute, ITI in remote areas in Khedbrahma in Sabarkantha district in Gujarat. We not only created, but also empowered the local communities to manage these institutions.

Overall, over the decades, we have a better organisational structure where education, social, and health initiatives are being run.

Tell us about slum upgradation programme?

In 1995, we were created ‘Strategic Help Alliance for Relief to Distressed Areas’ (SHARDA). While NLRDF was managing the rural programmes, SHARDA focused on urban poor. 

In 1998, our slum upgradation programme was included amongst the 100 best global practices.

Slums are usually known to be resource draining liabilities and they usually do not have good infrastructure. We believed that slums actually have lot of resources which can be put to better use in providing them quality infrastructure facilities. The local government requested us to manage this programme, and we were successful in completing the programme well within the stipulated time and budget.

We ensured that every house had a toilet, access to water and electricity, and concrete roads. It was well-managed and we asked the people to pay for the facilities offered to them. While the slum dwellers paid one-third of the cost, Arvind limited contributed one-third of the expenses and the rest was borne by Ahmedabad municipal corporation and community making them the equal partner in true sense. 

Any notable programmes of Arvind Foundation?

We are managing the rural programmes for over 40 years and the urban programme for 25 years now. In 2015, we launched Arvind Foundation and all our initiatives have moved into this umbrella organisation without compromising on the operational independence of NLRDF and SHARDA.

Arvind’s CSR has three thematic focus areas: educational advancement, rural advancement and cultural advancement.  On Educational advancement, we created a program Gyanda. It is Arvind’s flagship programme in the area of education.

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation runs over 450 schools that provides free education to over 1.3 lakh students. Most of the students live in congested urban settings and given the social and economic constraints, many students tend to drop out after primary education.

Gyanda programme mentors children from the urban poor families, and provides supplementary education to those studying in schools run by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. The idea is to ensure that these children complete their education at least up to Class XII. They get quality education and we help them in establishing Education – Employment link, thereby making them the last generation in poverty.

Another important initiative undertaken by Arvind is a programme that empowers tribal women. We conceptualised the programme of training and placing the trained girls with Arvind and ensure that they work and stay with us. It is a unique residential programme based on a 6E strategy of Equipping (skilling), Employing (Job), Earning (Salary & saving), Educating (Higher Education), Empowering (Decision making and pursuing aspirations), Exploring (their potential).

We identify girls from dense tribal areas like Godhra, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Narmada, Valsad etc. The identification, selection and training is done through our civil society partners like Gram Vikas Trust, Shroff Foundation Trust and Arul Rural Development Foundation. Candidates are selected based on their academic qualifications, dexterity, aptitude and health. Once selected, Arvind takes care of all their basic needs – housing, food, health and transport – as well as helping them in pursuit of higher education in addition to the statutory salary and benefits.

This did the magic as once they start living in the dormitories and work for Arvind, they are paid a salary with complete social security benefits and insurance. We realise that they had 5 to 6 hours free every day.  We tied up with Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University for graduation studies. Over 150 girls who stitched garments in Arvind graduated from the program and we add over 100 girls to this programme each year. They are also provided computer education, English literacy, career counselling and many of them have started moving from Blue-collar to white collar jobs.

With a little help, two of our girls are now serving as Police Constables drawing a salary close to 30,000 rupees. This is the journey I believe every development programme must have!

Pandemic has disturbed the pace of all initiatives but things are getting back to normal now.