Nabard organized a roundtable discussion on ‘Corporate Social Responsibility – Partnering Development’ for major corporate houses with the objective of exploring the possibilities of converging CSR initiatives of corporate houses effectively and efficiently with Nabard developmental interventions. Some 36 representatives of 26 corporates participated in the roundtable. B.G.Mukhopadhyay,CGM, Nabard, addressing the participants, said the objective of the roundtable was to chalk out a roadmap for convergence in the CSR initiatives of corporates with the various programs of Nabard in the sphere of agriculture and rural development. H.K. Bhanwala, chairman, Nabard, emphasised that most of the regular works of Nabard qualify as CSR activities. He outlined the major programs/initiatives taken up by Nabard as SHG movement, Kisan Credit Card scheme, JLG, watershed development, rural tourism etc and said corporates working in collaboration with Nabard in CSR will benefit by accessing the knowledge, experience and learnings NABARD has gained in this field over the last three decades. Participants included those from Tata Trusts, NTPC, Reliance Foundation, Indian Oil Corporation, NCDEX, MCX, ITC, TVS Motors and JSPL. R. Amalorpavanathan, DMD, Nabard, said Nabard and the Corporates working in this field have to think big and scale up the activities. The effort should be not in carrying out activities in traditional way, rather new areas, new technology and new system of delivery have to be identified and adopted, he said He identified certain thrust areas like technology dissemination, credit support to producers organizations, value chain creation, infrastructure creation, risk mitigation for farmers, software development in monitoring activities etc.