Arun Singh visits Patel statue
What better way to show your loyalty to the government of the day than to plan your CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) budget at the feet of one of India's founding fathers.
Over two days from April 7-8, ONGC directors, including chairman Arun Singh, flew to Vadodara and headed straight to the world's tallest statue: a 182-metre-tall replica of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the first post-independence home minister, widely dubbed the Iron Man of India. With national elections slated for next year (2024), there was no mistaking ONGC's message.
"High on the agenda was deciding on the CSR budget for next year," says a source. "ONGC is also a big donator to the PM Cares Fund."
Originally set up to deal with emergencies and distress situations during Covid, ONGC contributed another Rs100cr ($12.1m) to the PM Cares Fund on March 31 (2023), dressed up as CSR. In 2017, ONGC also donated Rs50cr ($6m) towards the construction of Vallabhai Patel's Statue of Unity.
To its credit, ONGC is the most generous among PSUs with its CSR hand-outs. According to its annual report for the year ending March 31 (2022), ONGC alone has spent Rs2736cr ($333m) on CSR in the last five years.
In 2021-22, it forked out Rs436cr ($53m), the highest that year among oil and gas PSUs. With such big sums involved, was it any wonder all of ONGC's HR planners were drafted in to attend the two-day meeting? Organised and financed by ONGC's exploration-focused Western Onshore Basin, chairman Arun Singh had neither the time nor inclination to repay the favour by visiting the office of what is, after all, a critical component of ONGC's E&P efforts not only in Gujarat but elsewhere in India.
Like others at the two-day meeting, Singh flew out of Vadodara promptly on April 9 (2023). "When he (Singh) arrived, he went directly to the statue," says a source.
"He did not visit the western onshore office."