(a) Whistle blower, who reports corruption and illegal activities, wrongdoing and misconduct to the concerned authorities, runs the risk of being exposed to grave danger, physical harm and victimization by the vested interests, accused persons and his team. What policy measures would you suggest to strengthen protection mechanism to safeguard the whistle blower? (b) In contemporary world, corporate sector's contribution in generating wealth and employment is increasing. In doing so, they are bringing in unprecedented onslaught on the climate, environmental sustainability and living conditions of human beings. In this background, do you Responsibility (CSR) is efficient and sufficient enough to fulfil the social roles and responsibilities needed in the corporate work mandated? Critically examine.

(a) Policy measures to protect whistle-blowers

• A whistle-blower reports corruption, illegality or grave misconduct to a competent authority and is then at risk of transfer, dismissal, assault or a false case.
• The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 is the Union’s dedicated statute. It needs full, notified, usable machinery: a competent authority that is independent of the accused office, time-bound inquiry, and penalties for victimisation.
• Identity protection must be default, with disclosure only when the inquiry truly cannot proceed otherwise, and with criminal cost for leaking a name to the accused.
• Physical security: a graded protocol with the police when a threat is credible, including for family, because victimisation is often domestic.
• Career protection: a bar on punitive transfer, adverse ACR and suspension that is in substance retaliation; a fast external review of such orders.
• Reverse burden in departmental inquiry where the timing of punishment closely follows a protected disclosure, so that the organisation must justify the coincidence.
• Multiple doors: Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013; the Central Vigilance Commission; the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 complaint route; and sector regulators (SEBI, RBI) with their own safe channels.
• Anonymous and digitally secure intake that still filters malice, so that a honest junior is not forced to sign a death warrant with a name-stamp.
• Compensation and interim relief if the person is suspended or attacked, funded so that silence is not the cheaper option.
• Witness-protection style measures for the few cases that go to criminal trial, aligned with the Supreme Court’s witness-protection directions.
• Culture: training that treats a protected disclosure as duty, not as disloyalty, and punishment of the official who hunts the messenger.
• Media leak is not the first policy. It is a last resort when every competent door is captured. The policy aim is a safe official door that works.

(b) Is CSR efficient and sufficient?

• Corporate Social Responsibility in India is given statutory form by Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, which requires specified companies to spend a prescribed share of profits on listed social activities, with board oversight.
• Efficiency: CSR can fund schools, health camps and a local pond with speed that a distant budget line may lack, and it can use a firm’s logistics.
• Inefficiency: much spending is advertisement, a temple wall, or a safe urban project far from the factory’s actual pollution. Impact measurement is still weak.
• Capture: a promoter’s pet trust can recycle the mandate as branding. That is not a social duty discharged; it is a marketing line item.
• Sufficiency: CSR is not sufficient for corporate social and environmental roles. A firm that spends two per cent and poisons a river has not balanced the ledger.
• The real duties are in the operating core: tax honesty, lawful labour, occupational safety, product quality, and pollution control under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and related water and air laws.
• Climate duty needs science-based cuts, disclosure, and an end to greenwashing, not only a tree-plantation photograph booked as CSR.
• Employment and supply-chain dignity — no child labour, no unpaid contract workers — are not optional CSR; they are the social role of a firm that generates wealth.
• The “unprecedented onslaught” named in the stem is produced by production and extraction. CSR that does not change production is a bandage on a wound the firm is still cutting.
• Critical conclusion: keep Section 135 as a floor of giving, tighten disclosure and independent audit of CSR, and never treat it as a substitute for regulation, carbon rules, labour inspection and director liability.
• A sufficient corporate ethic is: do not harm in the main business; then the CSR rupee can help. The reverse order is public-relations ethics.