Companies are spending the amount of corporate social responsibility (CSR) according to the rules of the government, but the North East is getting a very small part of it. An analysis of data compiled by Prime Infobase.com shows that Northeast India received only 7.7 per cent of the CSR amount in FY 2021-22. This is the second lowest amount spent in the Northeast after CSR spending was made mandatory in FY2015. In FY17, the highest share of CSR at 10.1 per cent was spent in the Northeast. Companies have to spend 2% of their profits on CSR projects. The analysis includes the amount spent from CSR funds in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. Assam has got the maximum share among these states. In the financial year 2022, Assam got Rs 319 crore. The rest of the northeastern states got Rs 100 to 130 crore each on an average. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka received more than 35 per cent of the total Rs 14,558 crore spent under CSR. These five states were among the largest in terms of GDP at current prices before the pandemic (in 2018-19). These states got a total of Rs 5,136.5 crore in CSR, while the North Eastern states got only Rs 1,125.8 crore. In FY2015, the top five states got Rs 2,500 crore and the North East’s share came to Rs 650 crore. One of the reasons for such allocation is that most of the companies are located in a few commercial centers of the country. These include metros like Mumbai and Delhi. As a result, their share in CSR expenditure is higher. States like the Northeast have fewer industries, so they get less share of CSR funds for development goals. The NITI Aayog report on the development of the sector states, “The share of the manufacturing sector in the region in the Net Gross State Domestic Product (excluding Tripura) is less than 20 per cent. The secondary sector accounts for more than 18 per cent of the income of the northeastern states, while the share of the primary sector is 31.4 per cent. The share of tertiary sector is around 50 per cent. Earlier reports like KPMG’s ‘India’s CSR Reporting Survey 2019’ have pointed out such disparity. It states that states with more aspirational districts receive a smaller share of CSR funds than richer states. This may also be due to the structural problem of CSR, where companies do not have the same incentive to redistribute as in government spending, which politicians decide by vote. ‘Government allocates 32 per cent of its social sector budget to 6 states with per capita GDP of less than Rs 1 lakh’, says NGO Dasara and global consulting firm Bain & Company’s India in 2023 report , While 17 percent allocation is done under CSR. If we look at the different heads of CSR expenditure, it is known that companies have spent Rs 5,884 crore on gaushalas and projects related to cows since FY15. A total of Rs 7,918 crore has been spent on CSR in the Northeast so far. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′; n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0); s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’, ‘ fbq(‘init’, ‘550264998751686’); fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);