Corporate Social Responsibility And ESG Compliance: Trends And Challenges: A Comparative Legal And Regulatory Analysis Of India, The European Union And The United States
- IJLLR Journal
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
Dr. Nandita Adhikari, Chotanagpur Law College
ABSTRACT
Corporate Social Responsibility ("CSR") has evolved from a voluntary, philanthropic exercise into a codified legal obligation, while Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG") compliance has emerged as the dominant vocabulary through which capital markets and regulators assess corporate accountability. This paper undertakes a doctrinal and comparative analysis of the legal architecture governing CSR and ESG in India, the European Union and the United States, tracing the trajectory from Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 -- the world's first statutorily mandated CSR-spending regime -- through the Securities and Exchange Board of India's Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting ("BRSR") framework, to the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive ("CSRD") and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive ("CSDDD"), and the contested fate of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate- disclosure rule. The paper argues that the global ESG project is presently undergoing a decisive recalibration: the EU's Omnibus I Directive (EU) 2026/470 has substantially narrowed CSRD/CSDDD scope, the SEC has moved to formally rescind its 2024 climate rule, and Indian regulators have deferred value-chain ESG assurance notwithstanding continued BRSR Core expansion. Employing statutory interpretation, case-law analysis and empirical data from the National CSR Portal, SEBI circulars and comparative regulatory sources -- presented through original data visualisations -- the paper evaluates the doctrinal coherence, enforcement architecture and practical efficacy of these regimes. It identifies persistent challenges of definitional ambiguity, greenwashing, weak assurance mechanisms and fragmented cross-border standards, and examines judicial developments from Indian polluter-pays jurisprudence to the UK Supreme Court's parent-company duty-of-care doctrine and the Dutch Milieudefensie litigation. The paper concludes with law-reform recommendations directed at harmonising disclosure taxonomies and strengthening enforcement, while cautioning against regulatory retrenchment that could erode two decades of
accountability gains.
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; ESG Compliance; Companies Act 2013; Section 135; BRSR; SEBI; Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive; Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive; Omnibus I Directive; Greenwashing; Stakeholder Theory; Corporate Governance.
