Mandating CSR like taxation: Tata

Tata Trusts & Khan Academy sign pact to provide free online education

Mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending for companies are “like a tax” and the government should help identify the beneficiaries, Tata Sons’ chairman emeritus Ratan Tata said on Sunday.

On Parliament having made CSR spending mandatory for companies above a certain threshold, at two per cent of profit, Tata said, “The mandated two per cent the government has (enforced) becomes like a tax.”

The comments came at an event  where Tata Trusts, the Tata Group’s philanthropic arm, and Khan Academy, a global leader in the online education space signed a five-year partnership to provide free online education in local languages, across desktop computers and smartphones. Tata and Salman Khan, founder and chief executive of Khan Academy, announced the tie-up on Sunday.

Khan Academy, a non-profit organisation based in America’s Silicon Valley, is a leading online destination for students seeking free education in mathematics, sciences and humanities. It develops educational content and distributes it on the internet. It has 26 million registered users and has delivered 580 million lessons and an estimated four billion exercise problems to students across the world.

The Tatas have been involved in providing grants to institutes and scholarships to students. The latest initiative can reach millions, Tata said. “We have been in education for almost 100 years but mostly in the traditional form of giving grants to institutes and providing scholarships. Sal Khan has created a refreshingly different concept of providing free education to anybody, anytime, providing they have a device. This partnership will make a difference to the generations to come.”

What & how
On the partnership with Tata Trusts, Salman Khan said, “We were like kindred spirits; as soon as we started talking, the dots began to get connected on what was possible.” Khan Academy launched a Hindi version last week, and will have content that works both online and offline, and on low-cost devices.

The partnership is based on the belief that technology can help provide quality education to everyone. The collaboration of Khan Academy with Tata Trusts, as the lead founding partner, will enable the partnership to build upon the former’s existing resources and tools to serve the specific needs of Indian learners. It will also work with other partners to empower students and teachers, particularly those who lack access to quality education.

In the first phase (the first two years), the partnership will focus on designing educational resources for middle income and low income students in urban areas. In the second phase, it will go into additional content areas and strengthen the system to serve learners in a more diverse set of environments. Khan said local educational material would be mapped with the National Council for Educational Research and Training, in English and Hindi.

Tata Trusts has not disclosed the amount of funds it will put into the partnership.

Before starting Khan Academy, founder Salman Khan, worked in the hedge fund sector, after an MBA from Harvard Business School and three degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Khan was tutoring his cousin on the internet, and started uploading videos on YouTube, which became a big hit, and led to the creation of Khan Academy.