Good deeds by bad dudes.

"The fear that capitalism might be failing forced 180 CEOs of the largest corporations in America to unveil last month a new statement of purpose," wrote Gurcharan Das. "The new statement of purpose wants a company to balance the interests of shareholders with those of customers, employees, suppliers, communities, the environment and be accountable for its social impact." The most important point here is that it was a purely voluntary act in the US while it was forced on Indian companies by the previous government in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Act in 2013. The present government sought to impose prison terms on company executives for not meeting CSR objectives. "A poor investor already feels cheated by the CSR law which 'steals' 2% of her profits for non-profit making activity." The government already taxes company profits at 48.3%, according to the OECD and forced CSR adds another 2% to it, which means shareholder dividends, which are paid out of net profits, are severely reduced. There is a long list of universities in the US with endowments in billions of dollars, with Harvard at the top with $35 billion. The Carnegie Foundation donates to higher education, the Rockefeller Foundation helps health, agriculture and social sciences, while the Stanford University was established by Leland Stanford. Who were all these generous men? They were known as 'robber barons' who earned vast fortunes through monopoly businesses established by ruthless and, frequently, illegal means. Forced philanthropy in India was epitomized by the nationalization of private banks by Indira Gandhi in 1969. This apparently helped the poor by forcing banks to open branches in rural areas and give loans to poor people, wrote MS Sriram. If nationalisation was so successful why has Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Jan Dhan Yojana scheme opened zero balance accounts for 340 million people? Actually, the bank nationalization by Indira Gandhi may have failed to stimulate economic growth but it was an enormous political success because it smashed her main opposition, the Swatantra Party, wrote SA Aiyer. There is no CSR in the US but billionaires voluntarily donated $14.7 billion in 2017 to various causes. Another way of discriminating against the middle class is reservation of seats in higher education, which is why China is surging ahead in technological innovation while India falls behind. A different version of CSR is contribution to political parties, which then leads to help from nationalized banks in the form of unsecured loans. That is why people so eagerly vote for politicians with criminal records. In the US robbers give to charity, while in India charity gives to robbers. Hence, it is forced.