Corporates in India can work together with the Government to bring about a rapid transformation by trying to achieve some of the set priorities that need immediate attention, a panel of business leaders said here on Friday.

Participating in a panel discussion after the presentation of the BusinessLine Changemaker Awards 2019, they said the selfless work being done by some of these award winners was motivational, and corporate India should come forward to support them so that they can do more.

Opening the discussion, BusinessLine Editor Raghavan Srinivasan wondered what prevents Indian corporate houses, which have great resources in terms of talent, knowledge and money, from bringing about societal transformation on a large scale.

Tanmay Chakrabarty, of Tata Sons, said corporates in India should first be allowed to become self-sufficient; only then can they turn to social good. Governments in India have to come out of the traditional British kind of bureaucracy to allow the corporate sector work with the government in a manner that is much more open and participative.

“In the last four years, corporates in India spent as much as ₹50,000 crore on CSR activities alone, and most of this went to support initiatives in education,” said N Venkatram of Deloitte India.

Rajen Vagadia, Country Head of Qualcomm, said technology could be leveraged to achieve much more. The telecom revolution in the country over the last two decades has completely transformed communication. He said, despite having skilled medical practitioners and robust communication networks, telemedicine services don’t work efficiently, because the country lacks quality medical infrastructure in the rural areas. But that can be changed, he said.

Kamal Arora of Dell Technologies, said his organisation has been undertaking CSR activities even before it became mandatory.

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