Analysing gaps in reporting sustainability in supply chains in India

Abstract

As the concept of sustainability expands out of the popular tone of environment and the world gets more conscious about the actions of supply chains of businesses, acting as the veins of the global economy, the need for regulators to catch up with the developments grows overtime. Mixed with the demands of the communities and impact organisations working to make businesses liable for their actions, the need for a regulation to mandate businesses to report their due diligence and make more quantifiable metrics public has grown immense.

France become the first country to release a mandatory sustainability reporting regulation but the regulations of Germany and Norway some years down the line turned out to be stricter, progressive and wider.

In the same light, India has released various regulations from guidelines to reporting mandates. In the current scenario of sustainability reporting, the BRSR framework released by SEBI is the first mandatory action taken in India at the regulatory level. Though an initial step to catch up with the global developments, this study compares the Indian regulations to the benchmarks of sustainability reporting globally.

This study compares the regulations on 4 dimensions of Scope, Obligations, Stakeholder Engagement and Enforcement and contains a document analysis to compare the provisions of each regulation with their dimension to identify the gaps that Indian framework has in contrast to the global benchmarks.