Hency Thacker

HDFC Bank, country’s largest private sector lender has said on August 14, 2019, that it spent Rs 443.80 crore on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the fiscal year ending March 2019. This is after the government released a list of entities which was named as having fallen short of the mandatory spending, and it included...

India is racing to become a $5 trillion economy in the next 5 years as per the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is imperative to double the farmers’ incomes in order to achieve this. However, with a rising scarcity of natural resources such as land and water, and increasing food insecurity because...

A high-level committee chaired by Injeti Srinivas, secretary, corporate affairs ministry, has suggested removing the criminalisation of non-compliance with CSR norms. The committee has recommended that non-compliance of CSR should be made a civil offence and moved to a penalty regime. The committee submitted its recommendations to Finance Minister Ms Nirmala Sitharaman suggesting that CSR...

Delhi has always been on the top of the list of most polluted cities of the world. In order to improve the air quality in the capital several initiatives have been taken over the years to increase the green cover. Despite this, the situation has not improved significantly. Stubble burning in the nearby states...

In a first step towards empowering the transgender population of India, The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019, has been passed in the lower house of the parliament by a voice vote on August 5. The bill introduced with an aim to ensure that the people of the transgender community are able to...

About 2 million people were displaced from their homes, and around 28,000 are still forced to flee on a daily basis due to persecution, conflict and natural disasters last year. The International Chamber of Commerce marked World Refugee Day on June 20, by launching a partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and issuing...

Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely discussed being a focal point for debates about hope and scepticism related to the world’s future development. AI is an innovation which will profoundly change our economy, politics and society – it is, therefore, time to ask if and how AI will change corporate social responsibility (CSR)...

Over the last 20 years, the building sector has focused on tackling the 28% of global emissions created by the operational phase of a building, the greenhouse gases pumped out by offices and homes as they are cooled and heated. Far less attention has been paid to embodied carbon, those emissions created during the...

The estimated $550bn global hotel and hospitality sector is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. And with some 17.2 million rooms booked each year, it is also one of the most impactful. Tourism contributes about 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and those are set to grow by 130% by 2035, according to the...

In agriculture, big data is often viewed as a combination of technology and analytics that can collect and compile novel data and process it in a more useful and timely way to assist decision making. Data mining is the computing process of discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial...

It is easy to remember stories. In fact, a chance of being able to narrate a story of a movie accurately is very high for a person, even if they have seen the movie only once, long time ago than of them being able to narrate the 2nd law of thermodynamics even after reading...

The fashion industry is becoming polarized. With more and more consumers seeking sustainability and transparency in fashion, it is becoming very challenging for fashion brands to supply products that are sustainably produced, are fashionable and are also at an affordable price. Responding to the changing trends and several fast-fashion brands such as H&M have committed...