Corporate social responsibility activities in India increasingly focus on measurable, on-ground interventions rather than symbolic campaigns. For large organisations, CSR is no longer about visibility alone—it is about execution, reach, and long-term impact.
This body of work documents corporate social responsibility initiatives as they are implemented in real-world conditions, focusing on how programmes operate at scale and how they intersect with everyday life. The photography is grounded in process, not promotion.
I have documented corporate social responsibility activities for organisations including Shell India and Ernst & Young, working across sectors where safety, health, and access are central concerns.
CSR and Road Safety: Vision Care for Truck Drivers
One such project focused on road safety through vision care for India’s trucking community—a critical but underserved workforce that underpins the country’s economy.
As part of its corporate social responsibility activities, Shell initiated mobile eye-care camps for truck drivers in partnership with India Vision Institute (IVI), ZEISS, and VisionSpring.
These CSR initiatives provided free eye examinations, identified refractive and colour vision issues, and distributed prescription glasses. For many drivers, this was their first formal eye check-up. The intervention addressed a direct risk factor in road safety—uncorrected vision—rather than relying on awareness messaging alone.
Corporate social responsibility as reality on the ground in India
The photography focuses on how corporate social responsibility activities function in practice: temporary clinics set up at transport hubs, queues of drivers balancing paperwork and fatigue, consultations carried out under time pressure, and the moment corrective glasses are fitted.
Rather than staging outcomes, the work documents process and workflow, interaction between service providers and beneficiaries, and the scale and repeatability of CSR programmes.
This approach allows corporate social responsibility initiatives to be evaluated visually in the same way they are evaluated internally—through delivery, consistency, and effectiveness.
CSR Beyond Campaigns
Well-executed corporate social responsibility activities operate quietly. They are designed to reduce risk, close access gaps, and support livelihoods without drawing attention to themselves.
By documenting CSR projects in this way, the work moves beyond storytelling for public relations and toward visual documentation that can be used across corporate reporting, internal reviews, stakeholder communication, and public-facing CSR communication.
