Responsible Care: Historical Glimpses

May be, it is difficult to believe now; but fact was that Responsible Care was in hibernation for a decade from 1993 to 2003 in erstwhile Indian Chemical Manufacturers Association (ICMA) and now Indian Chemical Council (ICC) for certain reasons.

On specific invitation by Mr. Rajiv Pandya, then President of ICC, our Founder, Director Mr. Vijay Bukkawar, on his retirement from DISH (Directorate of Industrial Safety & Health) Maharashtra, was invited to join ICC as an Advisor with a specific agenda to resurrect the Responsible Care.

After diagnosing the causes for this failure, he lead a team to come out with first ever country specific Guidance Manual for Responsible Care. In the process he indigenised this most revered standard without any compromise with fundamentals and convinced Indian chemical industry that it is possible for them to have a Responsible Care Logo, if we can put certain extra efforts.

And then onwards ICC never looked back. Second Edition of this Guidance Manual for Responsible Care was also taken out under his leadership.

Major change in this edition was of a inclusion of a separate code titled as “Top Management – Commitment and Action”. This inclusion was found necessary to emphasise the “Role” of Top Management. Responsible Care is a standard that is strongly based on the Safety Culture of the company and world over it is seen that unless the Top Management is involved, Safety Culture related initiative never take off or sustain, in the manner those are expected. There is one more addition. In this code a proper position is given to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities, as a tool to harmonise relations with the communities around manufacturing facilities to share the risk and concerns. However this CSR is now legal requirement and helping this endeavour.

Present THIRD EDITION is a just reprint of the Second, with an addition of Security Code.