BEYOND FINANCIAL SUPPORT: THE ROLE OF VOLUNTEER MENTORSHIP IN EDUCATIONAL CSR EFFECTIVENESS- A MIXED-METHODS STUDY FROM INDIA'S MINING SECTOR

Abstract

 

Since the Companies Act of 2013 required a 2% net-profit commitment, India's mining industry has made significant investments in educational CSR. However, a worrying converging picture is shown by four separate government databases. Only 23.4% of Standard III pupils nationwide can read a text at the Standard II level, according to ASER2024. Jharkhand and Odisha are in the 6–9.9 percentage-point increase band (2022–2024), whereas Chhattisgarh, where girls' non-enrollment reaches 10%, demonstrates more limited gains. In comparison to Kerala's benchmark of 3.41%, UDISE+ 2023-24 reports a nationwide secondary dropout rate of 14.1%, with Jharkhand at 10.27% and Chhattisgarh at almost 16%. According to Sattva Consulting's (2023) research of the MCA CSR Portal, education received 29.9% of the Rs 1.84 lakh billion in overall CSR spent between 2014 and 2023; nonetheless, India's 112 aspirational districts received only 2.5% (Rs 4,594 crore) of total CSR. NITI Aayog ADP data confirm most aspirational districts in Jharkhand, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh carried composite scores of 50 or below as of August 2023.

This study builds a 330 district-level observation model based on secondary data triangulation among these four data sets. Mentor Continuity is significantly positive (β = 0.287, p = 0.002), Volunteer Mentorship Intensity is the dominant predictor of educational CSR effectiveness (β = 0.412, p < 0.001), and CSR Infrastructure Investment by itself has no significant independent effect (β = 0.118, p = 0.171; R2 = 0.64), according to regression analysis. These conclusions are supported by recent research: a 2025 systematic review of CSR in the mining industry confirms that the quality of stakeholder engagement is the primary determinant of CSR effectiveness (Setyawan et al., 2025); Goodera (2025) reports that employee participation in structured volunteer programs is double that of unstructured initiatives; and Kulshrestha (2025) independently finds that the impact of CSR education depends on measurable learning objectives rather than physical infrastructure.