Social Performance

Building Skills And Social Infrastructure Around Our Factories

For the households around our units, the challenge is to provide the necessary social infrastructure to enable a decent quality of life. Thus, these projects aim at creating sustainable livelihoods through community development for our second group of stakeholders - communities in the command areas of our factories.

Women’s Empowerment

Over 40,000 new students were covered through the Supplementary Learning Centres and Anganwadis

The Women’s Empowerment Programme covered over 18,700 women through 1,557 self-help groups (SHG) with a total savings of Rs. 340 lakh. Cumulatively, more than 40,000 women were gainfully employed either through micro-enterprises or assisted with loans to pursue income-generating activities. Agarbatti production was given a fillip during the year with the introduction of pedal machines, which helped in increasing production and, therefore, incomes for women. Production of raw agarbatti was 834 tonnes during the year. Altogether 1,326 pedal machines were operational in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to create livelihoods for women in the rural areas. The women-owned and managed scenting unit dispatched a total of 367 million sticks with a turnover of Rs. 4.45 crore.

Primary Education and Health and Sanitation

A strong foundation in primary education and skill building for the children of the community is a step towards ensuring improvement in the HDI indices for the community as a whole. Our primary education initiative with its focus on minimising drop-outs and ensuring that every child is in school and learning well aims at enriching the process of learning. It also enhances the learning environment by providing infrastructural support to government schools.

Over 40,000 new students were covered through the Supplementary Learning Centres and Anganwadis. Of these, 264 children were mainstreamed into formal schools. This year, 627 youth were covered by the skill development initiative.

To improve the health and sanitation conditions in villages around the Bhadrachalam, Kovai and Chirala Units, 352 toilets were constructed. These toilets are constructed in a radius of 10 km of the factory. These activities were undertaken on a cost sharing basis.