Personal Social Responsibility (PSR)

Punit Shukla

 PSR is the primary responsibility of every individual toward family, workplace, community, and environment (both ecological and social). Despite lot of positive things being done by individuals to give back to society, even this is not enough. This needs to become a social movement to stop further damage to our environment and society.

 Why PSR? “Be the change you wish to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi. Historically, it has been Government and more recently corporates along with philanthropists and other like-minded people. However, social responsibility is not only about a series of programs run by the Government for the welfare of the people or corporate or other nongovernmental programs.

Social responsibility is not the vested duty of chosen few, but is and should be the responsibility of every citizen. And this is Personal Social Responsibility (PSR).

 Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) aims to positively influence and impact people and environment outside the immediate circle of our social set-up.

Constituents of social responsibility: Social responsibility is an ethical framework which suggests that an entity, be it an organization or individual, has an obligation to act for the benefit of society at large.

Social responsibility has 3 components which ideally should be closely interlinked to maximize the impact.

a.   Government Social Responsibility (GSR): The basic duty of a government involves the big social welfare programs through which it creates the best environment for its people.

b.   Corporate social responsibility (CSR): is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. According to Business Dictionary, CSR is “ A company's sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates.”

c.    Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) : Accordingly PSR is primary responsibility of every individual towards family, workplace, community, and environment (both ecological and social).

So what is PSR?

• It is the moral responsibility of every citizen to do the right thing.

• It is voluntary and about personal integrity, ethics, commitment and ownership

• It is about give and take and striving towards continuous betterment of society

 In these turbulent times, the very fabric of civil society is under threat and is being torn apart. It becomes imperative for every individual to take ownership to do the right thing for the collective good and therefore the need of the hour is PSR.

Each of us have this personal social responsibility, which is equally important to a more familiar term: corporate social responsibility. It is about being a responsible human being in the society where we live and work. It is about learning to return. It is about taking care of what is around us so that the people around us and the planet we live on is left better off when we first started to learn.