OK, so this isn't directly an IT related issue, but it is indirectly as all of the devices that we use to deal with data on a daily basis are powered by electricity and as such, the looming crisis of energy shortages and adverse environmental changes certainly affect all of us that work in IT related fields.
Oil went over $60 a barrel today. An event unthinkable just 5 short years ago. As economies in developing countries such as China and India continue to grow at a rapid pace, the demand for oil and other fossil based fuels increases as well. Some experts think that we are at or near the point where supply is outstripped by demand, meaning that we can expect gas prices to continue to rise for the foreseeable future as we continue to fuel our societies primarily from these types of energy sources.
These types of fuel also have a secondary effect on the world around us as they tend to create carbon dioxide when combusted, which has been linked to global warming.
There is a solution available today that is relatively inexpensive, safe, efficient and clean. Nuclear power.
Think about it. The last time we had an accident where radiation was released into the public was almost 30 years ago at 3 Mile Island. Every coal powered generating plant puts out the same amount of radiation that was leaked in that one accident yearly. Basically, this means that the short sighted Not In MY Backyard (NIMBY) "environmentalists" have caused the public to be exposed to thirty 3 Mile Islands worth of radiation for every coal power plant we run.
Why in this day and age, when we have suffered power outages because of shortages in fossil fuel supplies as well as the shortage of generating facilities do we continue to harbor fears about one of the safest technologies known to man?
I'd rather live next to a Nuclear Power Plant than just about any other industrial facility you can think of. Refineries explode all the time, trains derail, planes crash, auto accidents abound, yet a safety record of one accident in 30 years isn't good enough?
"What about other alternative energy sources?", you might think. None of them are cheap enough, efficient enough or large scale enough TODAY, to give us the power that we need. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years, technologies like solar energy will be able to better meet our needs, but we can't wait that long.
Basically, for the last 30 years, environmentalists have wanted their cake and to eat it too. They wanted us to keep emissions down, conserve energy, reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and at the same time not increase our use of nuclear energy.
Well, the day is drawing near, if it isn't already here, when we have to address our energy problems and that means going with the one power source that we have left that can meet our current needs of safety, low emissions, value and capacity...Nuclear power.
It's time we stopped saying Not In My Backyard and started really doing what it takes to take on our modern problems of pollution and energy needs.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Sounds Of Blackness,Signs Of Whiteness
My blog-reading is, and is likely to continue to be for some time, confined to a few people Although "confined" is the wrong word in this context, "expanded" would be better. I am floating like a butterfly across an expanse of wild and brightly-coloured flowers.
An track by Sounds of Blackness (turn up the volume before clicking the link) was on the virtual turntable when I came across a couple of posts which fitted together so well I'm absolutely determined to pass them on. (I've tried to do this many times before for many other things but am time-poor...)
The trail started with a GV link to the blog France Watcher which reports on one man's campaign to honour his compatriots and rid his country of colonial monmuments. Mboua Massok defaced a statue of a French general which stands in Independence Square in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon. And he's proud of it, openly admitting to the deed in court. He says:
The trial is not about his person but about “colonisation, acculturation, and alienation…". According to Massok, the real issue here is not about defaced public property, but about Cameroonian national identity, and the imperative to Cameroonize public spaces such as streets, public, buildings and monuments: “Does General Leclerc, a French soldier, deserve to be honored at the Bonajo [Douala] independence square of all places, at the expense of Cameroonian martyrs such as Douala Manga Bell and Ngosso Din?”
"Deface" doesn't do justice to that multicoloured garb - red and green and purple and brown. As far as I can tell. The graffiti reads "To be demolished in 180 days. Our martyrs first." Mr Massok had already attempted to destroy the statue with a chisel (and failed) before turning to paint.
It reminded me of the work of Yinka Shonibare who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize a couple of years ago. He plays with ideas of race, class and identity and is perhaps best-known for his tableaux based on European history in which the mannequins are dressed in "African" fabric, itself often the product of the colonial nations exported back to the colonies.
But in a way both these examples of representations flow in one particular direction. Over at Naijablog Jeremy has an alternative suggestion, another current - the disruption of the symbolic economy of the white body:
The West has ownership of the production of signs, meaning and representation, thanks to an all-powerful corporate media machine. Many non-westerners are drawn to the glow of this symbolic economy like moths to a flame. It seems to me that an important but neglected project is to find effective ways of disupting this semiotic regime. One such strategem is to produce images of the white body which contradict this representational norm.
Turning the messages inside out. Black aid workers feeding skeletal white children. White beggars sifting through the rubbish in Lagos or Johannesburg - something one of his commenters has seen. Removing some of the marketing miasma.
An track by Sounds of Blackness (turn up the volume before clicking the link) was on the virtual turntable when I came across a couple of posts which fitted together so well I'm absolutely determined to pass them on. (I've tried to do this many times before for many other things but am time-poor...)
The trail started with a GV link to the blog France Watcher which reports on one man's campaign to honour his compatriots and rid his country of colonial monmuments. Mboua Massok defaced a statue of a French general which stands in Independence Square in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon. And he's proud of it, openly admitting to the deed in court. He says:
The trial is not about his person but about “colonisation, acculturation, and alienation…". According to Massok, the real issue here is not about defaced public property, but about Cameroonian national identity, and the imperative to Cameroonize public spaces such as streets, public, buildings and monuments: “Does General Leclerc, a French soldier, deserve to be honored at the Bonajo [Douala] independence square of all places, at the expense of Cameroonian martyrs such as Douala Manga Bell and Ngosso Din?”
"Deface" doesn't do justice to that multicoloured garb - red and green and purple and brown. As far as I can tell. The graffiti reads "To be demolished in 180 days. Our martyrs first." Mr Massok had already attempted to destroy the statue with a chisel (and failed) before turning to paint.
It reminded me of the work of Yinka Shonibare who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize a couple of years ago. He plays with ideas of race, class and identity and is perhaps best-known for his tableaux based on European history in which the mannequins are dressed in "African" fabric, itself often the product of the colonial nations exported back to the colonies.
But in a way both these examples of representations flow in one particular direction. Over at Naijablog Jeremy has an alternative suggestion, another current - the disruption of the symbolic economy of the white body:
The West has ownership of the production of signs, meaning and representation, thanks to an all-powerful corporate media machine. Many non-westerners are drawn to the glow of this symbolic economy like moths to a flame. It seems to me that an important but neglected project is to find effective ways of disupting this semiotic regime. One such strategem is to produce images of the white body which contradict this representational norm.
Turning the messages inside out. Black aid workers feeding skeletal white children. White beggars sifting through the rubbish in Lagos or Johannesburg - something one of his commenters has seen. Removing some of the marketing miasma.
DUFUS
In my youth a dog was a dog. It slept outside all the year round and had a perfectly good coat of its own. In cold weather the coat grew thicker. When it got warmer the coat got thinner.
Thanks to the sissification of modern urban living the above canine couture is actually useful rather than merely affectedly decorative. It's been raining buckets and dufus who needs serious squirrel-chasing action every day, twice a day, whatever the weather.
Unfortunately when he returns from his hunting expeditions there is no barn or out-house or even a porch for her to shed mud, water and grit in. We step straight off the pavement (muddy-puddled and pot-holed) through the front door of the terraced house onto the once-sunbeam-yellow carpet.
Hence the wet-weather gear. It proved very effective and prevented the absorption and subsequent redistribution onto the no-longer-golden carpet and no-longer-white walls of at least a pint of muddy water. However the resemblance to a certain brand of outdoor gear is deplorable but no doubt deliberate.
Thanks to the sissification of modern urban living the above canine couture is actually useful rather than merely affectedly decorative. It's been raining buckets and dufus who needs serious squirrel-chasing action every day, twice a day, whatever the weather.
Unfortunately when he returns from his hunting expeditions there is no barn or out-house or even a porch for her to shed mud, water and grit in. We step straight off the pavement (muddy-puddled and pot-holed) through the front door of the terraced house onto the once-sunbeam-yellow carpet.
Hence the wet-weather gear. It proved very effective and prevented the absorption and subsequent redistribution onto the no-longer-golden carpet and no-longer-white walls of at least a pint of muddy water. However the resemblance to a certain brand of outdoor gear is deplorable but no doubt deliberate.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Reservations
Story goes that a greedy man once found a hen that laid golden eggs. This extra ordinary stroke of luck set him finding ways and means for extending his luck. He imagined that killing the hen and extracting all the stored eggs will make him rich quickly; and that is what he proceeded to do. The inevitable result of his folly was that instead of getting the stored wealth, he lost the very hen that could have made him rich with a steady supply of golden eggs. This story has a moral that applies most to the Indian politicians who are currently busy devising ways for enforcing other backward classes (OBC) reservations at the premier Indian academic institutions for their imaginary gains and stuffed ballot boxes for them.
Even though hens capable of laying golden eggs do not exist in the physical world, yet the institutions like Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have almost acquired that status. Western multi-nationals and institutions of repute have been so impressed with the quality work done by their past graduates that they are in a race to harvest their new crops. If the multi-million rupees pay packages offered to the graduates of these institutes is any guide, these institutions are no less than the proverbial golden egg laying hens.
Struggling politicians of the current UPA coalition government in India have lately recognized the potential of these and other similar institution for instant gain for themselves. As a result, they are hurtling themselves into a gold rush of sorts to reap quick gains. While sugar coating their designs with lofty public spirited aims, these politicians are working overtime to devise admission quotas, reservations and controls to provide perceived nourishment to their vote banks and open new channels for lining their pockets. They are, however, oblivious of the fact that in their attempt to extract the “golden eggs”, they may end up killing these golden egg laying hens. Their rusty old tool of OBC Reservations may finally succeed in mutilating them if not outright killing them.
Modern IITs, IIMs and the like were set up as stand alone deemed universities during the initial years of the post independence era of industrial development. Thus, they escaped the otherwise inevitable controls of the affiliating Indian universities under the straight jacket of strict political and bureaucratic controls. These institutions enjoyed the freedom to devise procedures that allowed them to admit the most talented students; hire the best faculty and evolve the most up to date courses. Above all, they could implement the teacher managed examination system that was free from the ravages of the antiquated external examiner system. And to top it all, they enjoyed the added benefit of technical collaboration with many renowned academic institutions in the world. These advantages propelled them to the top of the academic totem pole in India and achieve parity with the best in the world.
No wonder that the older institutions stagnating under their affiliated status are in a rush to attain “deemed” university status for themselves, thus, becoming the new golden egg laying hens. What a spectacle, where the academician dominated wing of the government is busy freeing the older institutions from unwanted controls by providing them the deemed university status, and the other wing of the same government dominated by selfish politicians is busy imposing disabling controls? Thus, when an enlightened wing is engaged in diligently producing the golden egg laying hens, a more selfish wing is eying to kill them for their own benefits. An amusing aspect of the efforts the reservationists are making is the set of tactics they are using to mislead the public.
They are saying that reservations will not hurt the merit system for admission to these institutions. How could that be? Only 2% of the students who appear for the admission tests actually get selected; when you add 27% quota of students who could not be among those top 2%, the quality of the class is bound to go down. Maintenance of quality despite reservations is an empty rhetoric. It could be valid only if the backward class and poor students were tutored at government funded academies and made to win their admissions in open competition instead of sneaking in through the back door of reservations.
They say that the reservations will not take away the seats from the regular students as the government will compensate by increasing the seats in these institutions by the equivalent numbers. It is easier said than done, because increase in seats requires considerable amount of hard to find material and manpower resources. If these resources were available on the asking why were not they used to increase the seats earlier? Institutions are not built in a day. They develop over a period of time. It takes money and time to construct buildings, equip laboratories, and hire competent faculty to maintain the existing standards. Whereas, it is difficult to find the financial and other material resources, it is almost impossible to find competent faculty under the ongoing rate of expansion of the education establishment in India.
The university had 16 affiliated professional colleges but could not fill even one post of a full Professor. None of the applicants responding to repeated advertisements qualified even for the post of an Assistant Professor what to speak of filling the post of a Professor. IIT was short of 16 professors at that time. How, in those circumstances, could he part with even one professor? How will they get additional staff for suddenly expanded intake when they have difficulty in catering to the current load adequately?
Another ploy thrown by the reservationists is that they would meet the requirement of additional professors by increasing the retirement age of teaching staff. The ground reality is different even on this count. A large number of new colleges being establishes in the private sector are in need of qualified people to develop and mange them in the capacity of College Heads/Principals. They are tapping the existing pool of retiring professors for this purpose. Almost every professor in the retiring age group has one or more offers to head a new institution. They are, in fact, on the way out from the teaching pool to join the management pool. Thus, the promise of expansion of seats looks more hypothetical than real.
Nothing appeals to the politicians more than a permit, quota or reservation regime, as it allows them to get favors for their friends, associates and supporters. It also provides an easy avenue for them to line their pockets. A politician took over as the new Minister of Technical education when I was the advisor at the technical university as stated earlier. It was the time of new admissions. I got applications from two students with orders by the new Minister to admit them out of turn. When politely told that the students could not be admitted without going through the process of competitive admission test, the Minister roared that his recommended students be admitted as a part of “his quota”. It was not a cake walk for yours truly to tell the Minister that the university under the then management did not entertain any ministerial quotas. I could have suffered the recent fate of the Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where the Health Minister tried to dismiss him; but escaped because I had the support of the bureaucracy at that time.
Under these circumstances, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that behind the enactment of the reservation policy, the politicians have another hidden agenda. They want to have a foot in the door for expanding their control over the premier institutions to curry favors to their chosen ones. Once the reservation quotas are implemented, a regime of false documents and spurious certificates will be let loose. Results of such a regime are not difficult to perceive. The elite status of these institutions, painstakingly established, will cease to exist and the gains made over time will be lost in no time.
It is ironic that the leader of the UPA coalition and the current Prime Minister owes his position to his reputation for removing unnecessary controls and liberalizing the economy in early 1990s. That liberalization had brought tremendous gains to the economy and, in the process, brought foreign recruiting teams at the doorsteps of these very institutions making them what they are today. Will the same Prime Minister now preside over the re-introduction of reservation and controls on the very institutions that gained due to the removal of controls on a wider canvas?
The politicians need to be told in no uncertain terms that the people will not take their antics lying. Whereas medical community has taken the lead in registering their protest, the engineering community has lagged far behind, at least so far. It is high time that the engineering and management communities join their co-professionals in the medical world to let the politician know that they would not let them succeed in killing the hens laying golden eggs for the country.
Even though hens capable of laying golden eggs do not exist in the physical world, yet the institutions like Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have almost acquired that status. Western multi-nationals and institutions of repute have been so impressed with the quality work done by their past graduates that they are in a race to harvest their new crops. If the multi-million rupees pay packages offered to the graduates of these institutes is any guide, these institutions are no less than the proverbial golden egg laying hens.
Struggling politicians of the current UPA coalition government in India have lately recognized the potential of these and other similar institution for instant gain for themselves. As a result, they are hurtling themselves into a gold rush of sorts to reap quick gains. While sugar coating their designs with lofty public spirited aims, these politicians are working overtime to devise admission quotas, reservations and controls to provide perceived nourishment to their vote banks and open new channels for lining their pockets. They are, however, oblivious of the fact that in their attempt to extract the “golden eggs”, they may end up killing these golden egg laying hens. Their rusty old tool of OBC Reservations may finally succeed in mutilating them if not outright killing them.
Modern IITs, IIMs and the like were set up as stand alone deemed universities during the initial years of the post independence era of industrial development. Thus, they escaped the otherwise inevitable controls of the affiliating Indian universities under the straight jacket of strict political and bureaucratic controls. These institutions enjoyed the freedom to devise procedures that allowed them to admit the most talented students; hire the best faculty and evolve the most up to date courses. Above all, they could implement the teacher managed examination system that was free from the ravages of the antiquated external examiner system. And to top it all, they enjoyed the added benefit of technical collaboration with many renowned academic institutions in the world. These advantages propelled them to the top of the academic totem pole in India and achieve parity with the best in the world.
No wonder that the older institutions stagnating under their affiliated status are in a rush to attain “deemed” university status for themselves, thus, becoming the new golden egg laying hens. What a spectacle, where the academician dominated wing of the government is busy freeing the older institutions from unwanted controls by providing them the deemed university status, and the other wing of the same government dominated by selfish politicians is busy imposing disabling controls? Thus, when an enlightened wing is engaged in diligently producing the golden egg laying hens, a more selfish wing is eying to kill them for their own benefits. An amusing aspect of the efforts the reservationists are making is the set of tactics they are using to mislead the public.
They are saying that reservations will not hurt the merit system for admission to these institutions. How could that be? Only 2% of the students who appear for the admission tests actually get selected; when you add 27% quota of students who could not be among those top 2%, the quality of the class is bound to go down. Maintenance of quality despite reservations is an empty rhetoric. It could be valid only if the backward class and poor students were tutored at government funded academies and made to win their admissions in open competition instead of sneaking in through the back door of reservations.
They say that the reservations will not take away the seats from the regular students as the government will compensate by increasing the seats in these institutions by the equivalent numbers. It is easier said than done, because increase in seats requires considerable amount of hard to find material and manpower resources. If these resources were available on the asking why were not they used to increase the seats earlier? Institutions are not built in a day. They develop over a period of time. It takes money and time to construct buildings, equip laboratories, and hire competent faculty to maintain the existing standards. Whereas, it is difficult to find the financial and other material resources, it is almost impossible to find competent faculty under the ongoing rate of expansion of the education establishment in India.
The university had 16 affiliated professional colleges but could not fill even one post of a full Professor. None of the applicants responding to repeated advertisements qualified even for the post of an Assistant Professor what to speak of filling the post of a Professor. IIT was short of 16 professors at that time. How, in those circumstances, could he part with even one professor? How will they get additional staff for suddenly expanded intake when they have difficulty in catering to the current load adequately?
Another ploy thrown by the reservationists is that they would meet the requirement of additional professors by increasing the retirement age of teaching staff. The ground reality is different even on this count. A large number of new colleges being establishes in the private sector are in need of qualified people to develop and mange them in the capacity of College Heads/Principals. They are tapping the existing pool of retiring professors for this purpose. Almost every professor in the retiring age group has one or more offers to head a new institution. They are, in fact, on the way out from the teaching pool to join the management pool. Thus, the promise of expansion of seats looks more hypothetical than real.
Nothing appeals to the politicians more than a permit, quota or reservation regime, as it allows them to get favors for their friends, associates and supporters. It also provides an easy avenue for them to line their pockets. A politician took over as the new Minister of Technical education when I was the advisor at the technical university as stated earlier. It was the time of new admissions. I got applications from two students with orders by the new Minister to admit them out of turn. When politely told that the students could not be admitted without going through the process of competitive admission test, the Minister roared that his recommended students be admitted as a part of “his quota”. It was not a cake walk for yours truly to tell the Minister that the university under the then management did not entertain any ministerial quotas. I could have suffered the recent fate of the Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where the Health Minister tried to dismiss him; but escaped because I had the support of the bureaucracy at that time.
Under these circumstances, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that behind the enactment of the reservation policy, the politicians have another hidden agenda. They want to have a foot in the door for expanding their control over the premier institutions to curry favors to their chosen ones. Once the reservation quotas are implemented, a regime of false documents and spurious certificates will be let loose. Results of such a regime are not difficult to perceive. The elite status of these institutions, painstakingly established, will cease to exist and the gains made over time will be lost in no time.
It is ironic that the leader of the UPA coalition and the current Prime Minister owes his position to his reputation for removing unnecessary controls and liberalizing the economy in early 1990s. That liberalization had brought tremendous gains to the economy and, in the process, brought foreign recruiting teams at the doorsteps of these very institutions making them what they are today. Will the same Prime Minister now preside over the re-introduction of reservation and controls on the very institutions that gained due to the removal of controls on a wider canvas?
The politicians need to be told in no uncertain terms that the people will not take their antics lying. Whereas medical community has taken the lead in registering their protest, the engineering community has lagged far behind, at least so far. It is high time that the engineering and management communities join their co-professionals in the medical world to let the politician know that they would not let them succeed in killing the hens laying golden eggs for the country.
Corporate Social Responsibilty
One of the comments to the post in (The Indian Economy Blog) TIEB, referred to this article by Milton Friedman, titled The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits. The gist of the point made was that "ITC makes money by smoking, hence its CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility) is crap".
In the above piece, Milton Friedman himself makes the point,
"there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."
Yes, the goal of a company is to make profits. The goal of a CSR, run by a company, is to increase its profits, one way or other. It could be by assuring quality of supply of its raw materials, securing its interests or simply increasing goodwill or brand awareness. In doing so, it does something that benefits society at large.
ITC may sell cigarettes, but does not ask people to choose smoking at gunpoint. It is a responsible corporate citizen, because it plays by the rules defined in the world of business. If ITC spends money on an initiative like e-choupal, should we say "good" or should way shoo away ITC from the e-choupal initiative and let the villages be in the dark ages of middlemen and price information asymmetry?
Likewise, where do we draw the line at whats evil and whats good? Sugar factories for instance. It is known that sugarcane crop drains the soil of water and nutrients. Sugar, causes diabetes. Indeed diabetes is more prevalent than lung cancer, so should we ban sugar too? How about cooking oil? It causes cholestrol and blood pressure. Maybe we should ban all those too? Then how about non profit institutions? Most of the Christian missionary institutions have had conversion as their agenda while they undertook so called CSR projects. Social workers, political parties have their careers and votes on their agenda.
If there was no ITC, indeed no company which produced cigarettes or liquor or anything else "evil", would the world be a better place? Perhaps marginally, perhaps not. And then again, where would we stop? Sugar? Cooking oil? Pesticides?
Lets not jump and in and compare a terrorist organization doing charity work. Companies which follow all the laws are not terror organizations that blow up 2 year old kids in crowded temples. Also remember terror organizations operate out of the framework of the law in the country.
Having accepted that, lets take out the CSR programmes. Is the society better off or worse off without these programmes? The society is better off. Now about the companies. If the companies produce liquor or sugar or cigarettes and make a profit, as long as they follow the rules established in the area where they operate in, why should someone complain? If it were not for the profit they make, would CSR exist? Would all those jobs they created exist?
Yes, CSR programmes are for profit or goodwill or something positive. To achieve this goodwill companies do some sort of service to society. Granted that our politicians will always (not counting exceptions) take bribes, money, kickbacks, donations. As long the work is getting done and the country progresses, what is better? They take money and do the work or they take money or do not do the work? Likewise, if any CSR helps our society move up in life, so be it. Let us not point fingers at CSR.
Update: In an offline discussion, it was argued that smoking is inherently evil, but sugar is not, hence the two cannot be equated. But poison consumed in micro quantities can be good, while too much of good food can lead to bad. The other question is, who decides that smoking is evil? It is the perception held by a certain set of people. There is no generalization of what is evil and what is good when it is consumed by humans. For example, according to Jains, potatoes and onions and anything that grows below the ground must be avoided, so if we followed Jainism (a true pacifist religion), we could say that CSR by a potato chip company is crap. You get the picture.
In the above piece, Milton Friedman himself makes the point,
"there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."
Yes, the goal of a company is to make profits. The goal of a CSR, run by a company, is to increase its profits, one way or other. It could be by assuring quality of supply of its raw materials, securing its interests or simply increasing goodwill or brand awareness. In doing so, it does something that benefits society at large.
ITC may sell cigarettes, but does not ask people to choose smoking at gunpoint. It is a responsible corporate citizen, because it plays by the rules defined in the world of business. If ITC spends money on an initiative like e-choupal, should we say "good" or should way shoo away ITC from the e-choupal initiative and let the villages be in the dark ages of middlemen and price information asymmetry?
Likewise, where do we draw the line at whats evil and whats good? Sugar factories for instance. It is known that sugarcane crop drains the soil of water and nutrients. Sugar, causes diabetes. Indeed diabetes is more prevalent than lung cancer, so should we ban sugar too? How about cooking oil? It causes cholestrol and blood pressure. Maybe we should ban all those too? Then how about non profit institutions? Most of the Christian missionary institutions have had conversion as their agenda while they undertook so called CSR projects. Social workers, political parties have their careers and votes on their agenda.
If there was no ITC, indeed no company which produced cigarettes or liquor or anything else "evil", would the world be a better place? Perhaps marginally, perhaps not. And then again, where would we stop? Sugar? Cooking oil? Pesticides?
Lets not jump and in and compare a terrorist organization doing charity work. Companies which follow all the laws are not terror organizations that blow up 2 year old kids in crowded temples. Also remember terror organizations operate out of the framework of the law in the country.
Having accepted that, lets take out the CSR programmes. Is the society better off or worse off without these programmes? The society is better off. Now about the companies. If the companies produce liquor or sugar or cigarettes and make a profit, as long as they follow the rules established in the area where they operate in, why should someone complain? If it were not for the profit they make, would CSR exist? Would all those jobs they created exist?
Yes, CSR programmes are for profit or goodwill or something positive. To achieve this goodwill companies do some sort of service to society. Granted that our politicians will always (not counting exceptions) take bribes, money, kickbacks, donations. As long the work is getting done and the country progresses, what is better? They take money and do the work or they take money or do not do the work? Likewise, if any CSR helps our society move up in life, so be it. Let us not point fingers at CSR.
Update: In an offline discussion, it was argued that smoking is inherently evil, but sugar is not, hence the two cannot be equated. But poison consumed in micro quantities can be good, while too much of good food can lead to bad. The other question is, who decides that smoking is evil? It is the perception held by a certain set of people. There is no generalization of what is evil and what is good when it is consumed by humans. For example, according to Jains, potatoes and onions and anything that grows below the ground must be avoided, so if we followed Jainism (a true pacifist religion), we could say that CSR by a potato chip company is crap. You get the picture.
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