Reviewing cannot proceed on the assumption that the authors are lying. Everything cannot be proved! Asking for “model samples” is standard practice in the big journals (“supplementary material”) but this is there to give necessary detail to the abbreviated treatments presented in the main article. The devil is always in the detail! But brevity is a virtue, and having a space restriction for the argument is a good writing discipline.The job of the reviewer is to check that the argument is coherent in its own terms, and that it is reasonably plausible; that it is “timely and significant”, and that it represents the state of the art fairly. Authors (not reviewers) take responsibility for their own work.We cannot always “control fake results”, not by reviewing anyway (although some egregious examples ought to have been trapped!), since good faith is basic to the search for truth. Only time will ultimately tell. (But, as John Maynard Keynes famously said, “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead” (1923)!)
Source: Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019
Date of Notification: 31st July, 2019
Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 (the Act) has been amended by the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019 (Amendment Act).
However, the amendment is yet to be brought to force.
The summary of amendments to Section 135 are as under:
- CSR spending has been now made mandatory.
- Any unspent CSR fund (either arising from an ongoing project or not) should be transferred within thirty days from the last date of the financial year to a special account called “Unspent Corporate Social Responsibility Account”.
- If the company wants to spend the amount lying in the “Unspent Corporate Social Responsibility Account” on CSR obligations, it should do so within the expiry of three financial years from the date of such transfer.
- Any amount lying
in the “Unspent Corporate Social Responsibility Account” beyond three financial
years will have to be transferred to the fund specified under Schedule VII to
the Act. Hence money unspent will have to be credited to funds
like Swach Bharat Kosh or Clean Ganga Fund, Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund
or any other fund set up by the central government for socio economic
development and relief.
- The Central Government has now been empowered to give such general or special directions to a company or class of companies as it considers necessary to ensure CSR compliance.
- If a company contravenes the provisions relating to minimum CSR spending and / or transfer of the unspent CSR amount to the fund under Schedule VII the company shall be punishable with fine which shall not be less than Rs.50,000/- but which may extend to Rs.25,00,000/-. Every officer in default will be punishable with imprisonment for a term of three years or with fine which shall be not less than Rs.50,000/-but which may extend to Rs.5,00,000/- or with both.
Accordingly, the “comply or explain” approach has given way to “comply or suffer” approach.
We need business to understand its social responsibility, that the main task and objective for a business is not to generate extra income and to become rich and transfer the money abroad, but to look and evaluate what a businessman has done for the country, for the people, on whose account he or she has become so rich – Vladimir Putin
