Tata Power-DDL Wins in 2 Categories at 13th Global CSR Awards

Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL) has recently won two prominent awards at the prestigious 13th Global CSR Awards: the Platinum Award under the ‘Best Country Award for Overall CSR Performance’ category and the Silver Award under the ‘Best Community Programme’ category. The company serves round 7 million people in the national capital.

The Global CSR Awards 2021 is one of Asia’s most prestigious recognition awards programme for corporate social responsibility and corporate governance. This year, over 350 entries were received from over 100 companies all over the world and a final selection of 50 companies were recognized by the judging panel as institutions demonstrating strong corporate social responsibility programmes in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic era.

The CSR initiatives of Tata Power-DDL are run under the mother brand Saathi (meaning, a ‘companion’) in order to effectively reach out to over 1 million underprivileged people as well as the company’s consumers residing in 220+ JJ clusters in North Delhi.

The jhuggi jhopri cluster (JJC) is one of seven types of ‘unplanned’ settlement designated by the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). JJCs are located on “public land”—land owned by agencies like the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the Railways, etc—and have been constructed without permission. As a result, JJCs are often described as “encroachments” by governing agencies in Delhi, and their residents have experienced repeated waves of eviction and resettlement since the 1960s.

The latest data reports 672 JJCs in Delhi, containing 304,188 jhuggis. When JJC residents are evicted, current policy mandates that arrangements be made for their resettlement at another location by being allotted land or a flat designated for the ‘economically weaker sections’ (EWS). This process — ‘rehabilitation’ —is not an automatic process and is governed by complex regulations that mean not all evicted residents are ultimately ‘rehabilitated’.

Tata Power-DDL’s Saathi focuses on 4 main pillars– Women Literacy (Unnati), Youth Empowerment (Ujjwal), Better Health (Sanjeevani), and Energy Conservation (Club Enerji) and aims to positively impact society and bring about lasting development. All the initiatives are aligned with the UN- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the company.

“During the pandemic, the company not only made necessary arrangements to ensure uninterrupted power supply but also came forward with a slew of initiatives, under the theme ‘Powering Fight Against Corona’, to efficiently manage the crisis and mitigate its impact on its stakeholders,” states Tata Power-DDL.

The company reached out to the community to create awareness about the pandemic, provided them masks, educated them about the protocols and digital payments, sponsored cooked meals, deployed medical dispensaries in the communities and sensitized them about safety and preventive measures against Covid-19, Tata Power-DDL added.

CEO Ganesh Srinivasan said, “At Tata Power-DDL, Community Development is an important part of our DNA. We are undertaking focussed initiatives to ensure lasting and sustainable development to improve the lives of underprivileged people. This award bears testimony to our commitment and efforts to create an organization committed to social welfare.”