CSR by resource-extraction industries can be seen as both a legal obligation and a form of compensatory justice to mining-affected communities. Discuss with examples.

Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 makes CSR a statutory spending duty for large firms. In extractive industries, this legal duty overlaps with a moral one — restoring communities that bear the land, health and ecological costs of mining — giving coal-sector CSR a dual character.

CSR as a legal obligation

• Statutory mandate: Section 135 requires eligible companies, including CPSEs like Coal India Limited (CIL) and NLCIL, to spend 2% of average net profits through a board-level CSR committee, with audited reporting.
• Scale of compliance: coal CPSEs commit roughly ₹800 crore annually to health, education, skilling and environment [1].
• Institutionalisation: the Ministry of Coal's move to a sector-wide CSR framework consolidates scattered subsidiary-level efforts, improving convergence and monitoring.
• Yet the obligation is company-law based, not place-based — the law does not compel spending in mining-affected districts.

CSR as compensatory justice

• Restitution logic: mining causes displacement, dust and water contamination in tribal-dominated belts; routing CSR back to these areas partly repays that cost.
• Health equity: CIL's Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojana crossed 700 bone marrow transplants, with a "One State, One Hospital" goal to decentralise access [2].
• Child cardiac care: Nanha Sa Dil screens children for congenital heart disease in Jharkhand's coalfield districts, extended by SECL across Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh [3][4].
• Statutory parallel: DMFs under Section 9B, MMDR Act with PMKKKY are explicitly compensatory, with over ₹1 lakh crore collected across 600+ mining districts [5].

Limitations

• Discretion over location and sector persists; affected people hold no enforceable entitlement, and tertiary-care projects rarely address land loss or livelihood displacement.

CSR in mining thus works best when legal compliance is deliberately aligned with restitution. Convergence of CPSE CSR with DMF/PMKKKY planning, gram-sabha participation in project selection, and third-party outcome audits would make this shift durable — advancing distributive justice and SDG-3's promise of health for all.