After slurping its way through an alphabet soup of various parameters aimed at benefiting shareholders, a post-Enron world economic order is bingeing on a new acronym - CSR, or corporate social responsibility.

It's the latest buzzword for new-age corporations the world over and, of course, for India Inc.

Since greed, as the great American CEO drama has shown, is no longer quite as good as it was once supposed to be, social consciousness is the new leitmotif.

While many Indian companies and business houses have always maintained a certain level of commitment to social and charitable causes, in recent years many have had to hunker down as bottomline-obsessed market analysts took quarterly pot-shots at all that "unproductive expenditure".

Now that's changing and, with it, India Inc's corporate citizens are proudly waving the CSR flag. CSR looks great on company mission statements and value codes.

But where does flag-waving stop and real commitment begin? Many companies are making a social difference in qualitative terms through small, unpublicised micro-projects in their communities, and many others claim good work based on little more than CRY cards at festivals.

ET surveyed India's leading companies as well as business groups in order to get an idea about the kind and the extent of activities they undertake in the social field.

It's not easy to collate such data, or to make any kind of quantitative analyses, so we based this survey on a simple parameter - how much money do India's corporates put on the philanthropic table? It's not as if cash outlay is all there is to CSR.

But it's an indicator. Even the data for philanthropic spends isn't easy to collate or compare. While many corporates refused to put a figure on the work they were doing, in several other cases it was not possible to measure the exact amount.

We have used data collected from several sources. This included specific institutions like Indianngos.com, companies themselves, personally and also figures available in the annual reports and other corporate databases present in the market.

Again, some of the data is not really comparable because while most of it pertains to individual companies, for some entities only group-wise figures are available.

Two of the prominent examples on the top of our list are the Tata group (ET's Corporate Citizen of the Year for 1998), which spent around Rs 150 crore in ‘01-02 on social and charitable activities, and the AV Birla group (ET's Corporate Citizen of the Year for 2002) with a quantified charitable spend of Rs 57 crore.

The main expenditure of the Tata group is on rural development, including community health, women and children, with concentration on basic education and vocational training. Other efforts include drinking water, irrigation and farming.

Apart from the activities undertaken, significantly, over the last few years there has been a major change in companies' mindset with increased reliance on managerial skills.

As a result, social programmes have become more systematic and now there are pre-budgeted programme in various companies that are slowly getting structured.

Reliance Industries has been a major spender in this regard and the scope of its activities covers various fields. The company spent around Rs 34 crore in ‘01-02 on its various projects.

Some of the other leading spenders include Infosys Technologies at Rs 5 crore and HDFC, which apportioned Rs 4 crore into the Shelter Assistance Reserve - a multipurpose CSR fund undertaking a diverse range of activities.

There are several groups and companies that undertake quite a bit of charitable work but - either due to the absence of figures or as a matter of policy - do not divulge the kind and extent of amount spent on such activities.

Mahindra & Mahindra is one such company, and even though the figure against its name shows Rs 1.3 crore, this is just the amount available under the head donations in its annual report.

Its activities include the KC Mahindra Education Trust, which promotes education at various levels; Nanhi Kali, a programme aimed at helping the underprivileged girl child; the Mahindra Foundation.

Another example is the Piramal group, which runs several schools in rural Rajasthan and a hospital in Mumbai. Several of the different Birla groups also fall into this category.

For example, the BK Birla group runs several educational institutions and has also invested money in student hostels. The CK Birla group spends a lot on scientific institutions and its other activities include restoration work on temples, balwadis and medical centres. In addition, both the KK Birla group and the SK Birla group are active in the educational field.

HLL is another company where exact figures are not available, but its activities include the construction of a new village Yashodadham, comprising 289 houses, in Gujarat.

In addition, it runs an integrated rural development programme in Etah, UP, supports Asha Dan, a home for abandoned special children in Mumbai, and Ankur, a centre for education of handicapped children in Assam.

Again, it is not always possible to segregate expenses undertaken on charitable activities and show it under a separate head. Take, for example, the salary of a person who has undertaken work on the social front.

Not all companies will have cost accounting systems that precisely record the correct expense in the books under the head of social work and salaries, and thus this could lead to a situation where the overall expense is not properly segregated.

In other cases, there are donations that have been made by corporates to charitable trusts and other institutes. While this may involve tax benefits, in each and every case the exact amount and precise details might not be visible.

For many companies in the survey, the figure actually considered is the one shown in the schedules to the accounts under the head charities and donations.

In these cases, the actual figure could be higher depending on the nature and extent of charitable activities being conducted in addition to the amount shown in the accounts.

In other cases, figures pertaining to certain activities are available for a longer period of time. However, in order to get them down to the last financial year, we have relied on estimates based on information obtained from various sources.

There are diverse ways adopted by different companies in order to encourage their charitable activities. While for some, encouraging volunteers to give their time as and when they can is the approach adopted, others like ICICI Bank neither encourage nor discourage volunteers.

It has a separate Social Initiative Group to concentrate on development-related activities, which deals with the issue professionally, with the group having business goals and professional teams.

There are several MBAs in this area and people are selected for the group based on their genuine interest and an action-research orientation. It is estimated that the expense here is around 2-3% of the bank's profits.

Many pharma companies too are active in the sphere of charitable activities. Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation, for example, focuses on six areas of infrastructure, rural industry, agriculture, animal husbandry, health & sanitation and education & social welfare.

An important statistic available here is that for every rupee that Lupin has put into the foundation since its inception, it has attracted more than Rs 9 of contribution from other agencies and individuals.

Pfizer India has also been active in CSR, with its activities including building a hospital in the earthquake ravaged Bhuj; conducting Naee Nigah, a restoration of eyesight programme across 10 states; adopting senior citizens in an old age home.