The transition in governmental approach towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) from voluntary to mandatory has received much attention in the recent literature, mainly because the delegation of its role in social development has rarely been provided. In this context, the questions we raise are: Does mandatory CSR leads to higher expenditure? How does it affect business leaders' intrinsic motivation to spend on CSR? The case of India's section‐135 of Companies Act, 2013 shows that mandatory CSR has made companies more responsible by raising the level of CSR expenditure and positively affecting business leaders' intrinsic motivation to incur CSR expenditure. However, this gain has come at a cost as CSR expenditure has become more sensitive to profit, which is undesirable from society's perspective. The study uses instrumental theory and motivation‐crowding theory to explain the CSR behavior of NIFTY 100 companies from financial year 2009–2010 to 2018–2019. Overall, results of the present study suggest that government should prefer the approach of mandatory CSR with some precautions to instrumentalize the rising success of corporate sector for addressing the environmental and social issues in country.

Persistent socioeconomic inequalities in a society reduce the chances of employment for its weaker sections. In India, those most affected by inequality and discrimination are women, people of lower castes, rural households and illiterate people. This necessitates an analysis of the levels of discrimination and favoritism working against female, lower caste, rural and illiterate individuals in different manufacturing industries. This study presents an in-depth picture of employment in each industry with regard to the four variables selected — gender, caste, location and education. Fourth (2013–2014) and fifth (2015–2016) annual Employment and Unemployment Surveys have been used for the analysis.

Employment distribution disparities are preventing the Indian economy from achievinginclusive growth. The skewed distribution of employment is one of the reasons forthe rising inequalities in the economy. In this regard, the present study analyses theemployment probabilities of Indians working in the manufacturing sector. A binarylogit model has been used on a pooled cross-sectional dataset of the fourth (2013-14) and fifth (2015-16) Employment and Unemployment Surveys (EUS). The studyanalyses four major attributes, namely castes (social categories), gender, location, andeducation. We analyze these attributes separately for all the 29 main Indian states,and find that caste and location are highly important deciding factors of employmentprobabilities in the manufacturing sector.

Assessing the impact of CSR has recently gained momentum over the world. Most related literature examines how CSR investments affect financial performance without considering the nexus under commonly uncertain times. The study uses Indian data to extend the nascent literature on CSR and EPU by examining the impact of CSR on firm financial performance during commonly uncertain times. The Panel-Corrected Standard Error econometric technique has been employed to explore the influence of CSR on ROE across ten years for NIFTY 100 firms. Besides, System GMM estimation has been used to deal with the endogeneity bias. Evidence suggests that during ordinarily uncertain periods, CSR investments act as a social capital reservoir and improve firm financial performance. Moreover, the results show that the positive influence of CSR during times of uncertainty is greater for firms belonging to high visibility and more sensitive sectors. These novel findings would help corporate policymakers, individual investors, and managers to better understand and minimize the losses due to uncertainty. Keywords: CSR, firm financial performance, Economic policy uncertainty, System GMM, ROE JEL Codes: G34, G30, D80