The central government is promoting social audit of work
carried out under the national rural employment guarantee scheme (MNREGS) to
bring more transparency in schemes and check corruption. As part of the social
audit, gram sabhas review official records and determine whether state reported
expenditures reflect the actual money spent on the ground.
In the last few months, the Union rural development ministry
is promoting social audit of the work. Rules for such audits have been framed
in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
What is Social Audit?
Social audit is a process of reviewing official records and determining whether state reported
expenditures reflect the actual money spent on the ground.
Official records
obtained using RTI are read out at the public hearing to identify and
rectify irregularities. "This process of reviewing official records and
determining whether state reported expenditures reflect the actual monies spent
on the ground is referred to as a social audit."
A grass roots organisation of Rajasthan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
is believed to have started the concept of the social audit while fighting
corruption in the public works in the early 1990s. As the corruption is
attributed to the secrecy in governance, the 'Jansunwai' or public hearing and the right to information (RTI), enacted in 2005, are used to fight
this secrecy.
Civil society organisations (CSOs), non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), political representatives, civil servants and workers of Dungarpur district of Rajasthan and
Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh collectively organise such social
audits to prevent mass corruption under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)
Need of Social Auditing
Public money intended for a particular purpose (say
blacktopping of a stretch of rural road) is diverted towards purchasing luxury
vehicles for officers even though the department`s demand for grants submitted
to the Assembly Secretariat to finalize the appropriation bills never mentioned
such requirements.
The recent report of a joint task force on social audit has
made unanimous recommendations that have opened the possibilities of social
audit becoming a vibrant, independent and citizen-based monitoring system. The
Supreme Court too in a PIL has taken a note of these recommendations and is
exploring strengthening social audit as
a systemic solution in law. It is important to build on the current
momentum. The following points highlight the need of social audit:
·
They serve as an important tool to detect corruption and influence redress.
·
Nearly Rs 100 crore has been identified as
misappropriated funds through social audits under the MGNREGA, out of which
nearly Rs 40 crore has been recovered.
·
Nearly 6,000 field personnel have been
implicated/removed from duty based on findings of social audits.
·
The impact of continuous cycles of social audit
in deterring potential corruption is
beyond quantification.
·
Social audit is no longer a choice. Along with other transparency and
accountability platforms, it is a legal,
moral, and democratic necessity. The government can decide to use these
interventions and harness peoples’ energies in facing the vast challenge of
implementation and monitoring.
·
It ensures
prioritization of developmental activities as per requirements, proper
utilization of funds.
·
Conformity of the developmental activity with
the stated goals, Quality of service is also continuously monitored.
·
Since in every budget, be it the Union Budget or
State Budget, more than 50% of the
budget goes towards welfare schemes, therefore it’s important to track how,
and how much money is diverted away from intended recipients. Social audits serve as a better monitoring
tool for these schemes.
In some states like Telangana the digitally monitored scheme
MGNREGA is physically audited through a system of Social Audit and the images
of worksites are captured and uploaded online. MNREGA is implemented electronically through DBT (direct benefit transfer) as
every rupee is tracked, but still manipulation is possible. So to say that
physical verification is unnecessary because everything is digitally captured
is to allow ourselves to fall into a trap.
In Meghalaya, the social audit carried out so far under
MNREGA has unearthed several anomalies and irregularities and several FIRs have
also been filed against the authorities.
Under MNREG Scheme, the number
of people actually working is much less than that shown for claiming the wages
payable and the work done is poor in quality and quantity in several
departments/agencies/Authority etc.
There have been instances where the field personnel have been implicated or removed based on the findings
of the social audits. This is indicative of the fact that Social Audit is
working and is a tool to further reinforce transparency and accountability in
governance.
Expected Benefits
The benefits include:
- Involvement of people in developmental activities to ensure that money is spent where is it actually needed,
- Reduction of wastages in all type of public expenditure because it is not always leakage that causes wastage many a time it is negligence by implementer that results into heavy loss due to wastage .
- Reduction in corruption is actually one on of the greater objectives of the entire idea of social auditing.
- Awareness among people, as people are directly participating in the process.
- Promotes integrity and a sense of community among people,
- Improves the standard of governance because here government is not auditing itself.
- Participation of informed citizens promotes collective responsibility and awareness about entitlements.
Successful Experiences
Dungarpur District of Rajasthan
The mass social audit under the employment guarantee scheme
in Dungarpur is the most significant feature of the first phase of
implementation of the NREGA in India. Launched on 2 February 2006, the first
phase of the NREGA implementation included Dungarpur as one of 200 districts of
India. A district in the poor tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Dungarpur is also the birthplace of the
Right to Information movement in India. People take a foot march called 'Padayatra' with the aim of spreading
awareness across 237 panchayats (rural
self-government institutions) of Dungarpur employing 150,000 labourers at
1,700 worksites, about half of rural households belonging to Below Poverty Line
(BPL) group in Census 2001.
Two factors are believed to be responsible for making the
social audit a reality in Rajasthan:
- First, the presence of activist groups that monitored the public money spent on drought and relief works; and
- Second, the involvement of the working class in demanding employment as an entitlement
These social audits
highlight
- A significant demand for the NREGA,
- Less that 2 per cent corruption in the form of fudging of muster rolls,
- Building the water harvesting infrastructure as the first priority in the drought-prone district,
- Reduction of out-migration, and
- Above all the women participation of more than 80 per cent in the employment guarantee scheme.
- The need for effective management of tasks, timely payment of wages and provision of support facilities at work sites is also emphasised.
Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh
Across all 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh under NREGA, 54
social audits are conducted every month starting from July 2006. The scale and
frequency of social audits on NREGA works in Andhra Pradesh are the first in
India. Under National Food For Work
Programme (NFFWP), before NREGA, Andhra Pradesh received more than 3
million tonnes of rice between September 2001 and July 2002, enough to feed
twenty million workers for nearly a year, with a market value of Rs 30 billion
or $65 million.
Due to ineffective
mechanisms for limiting corruption, the 2001–2 NFFWP in Andhra Pradesh was a
failure. It was recommended that the checks and controls must be built into the
design of such programmes. Section 17 of
the NREGA mandates the regular conduct of social audits on all aspects of the
scheme.
Initially, in collaboration with [[Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan|MKSS] and Action aid], the Department
of Rural Development (DoRD) of Andhra Pradesh assisted the social audit
process through the Strategy and Performance Innovation Unit (SPIU).
Since May 2009, the Society for Social Audits Accountability
and Transparency (SSAAT), an autonomous body, which is responsible for the conduct of social audits in the state. While
the director of the SPIU was a civil servant, the director of SSAAT is an
activist. In January 2011, Andhra Pradesh introduced a separate vigilance cell in the Rural Development Department to
ensure follow up and enforcement of
social audit findings.
In Andhra Pradesh, after DoRD and SSAAT, the management
structure consists of state resource persons (SRPs), district resource persons
(DRPs), and the village social auditors (VSAs). The SRPs identify and train the
DRPs who in turn identify and train the VSAs. While the SRPs manage daily
activities like scheduling the social audit, contacting district officials,
ensuring follow up and enforcement of social audit findings, the DRPs manage
the actual conduct of the social audit, for instance, filing RTI applications,
and contacting the 'Mandal' level officials to organise logistics and public
hearing. To conduct the actual social audit, the volunteers among the NREGA
beneficiaries are selected from 'gram sabhas' or village assemblies by DRPs
Challenges to Social Auditing
However, not all is rosy and hurdle free. Following the challenge in realizing the
desired level of of social audit:
·
Institutionalisation of social auditing in India
on the ground has been inadequate, and has faced great resistance from the
establishment.
·
The social audits in many parts of the country
are not independent from the influence
of implementing agencies.
·
Social audit units, including village social
audit facilitators, continue to face resistance and intimidation and find it difficult to even access primary
records for verification.
·
In many states and local levels of government the talks of Digital or e-governance is
still a possible distant reality. Many schemes, programs or projects
implemented so far have reached the beneficiaries either partially or disproportionately as no audit mechanism is available
as of now except for the centrally sponsored scheme.
Social Audit: Outside India
Social auditing outside India is mostly institutional and
focused on accounting and corporate social responsibility (CSR), following are
some examples:
·
The Social
Audit Network (SAN) is a not-for-profit
organisation which facilitates the exchange of information and experience
between practitioners of social accounting and audit in the social economy and
voluntary sectors. SAN holds regular meetings, events and an annual conference
at venues around the UK. The SAN also
operates in India.
·
Global
Standards consulting group specializes in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues including
international labor, environmental and safety standards for export
manufacturers in Asia, Headquartered in
Vietnam, with regional expertise and reach, Global Standards operates with
local teams in Vietnam, China, Taiwan,
Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Korea.
·
Global Standards conducts consulting, training
and monitoring services to:
o
Assist
international firms to implement Codes of Conduct and Social Responsibility
programs through training, consulting and monitoring of manufacturers.
o
Help local manufacturers and suppliers to understand and comply with
international standards through training, consulting and capacity building
aimed at improving management and documentation systems and attaining
compliance goals.
Way Ahead
The social sanctions are unlikely to curtail malpractice
among other functionaries, who often escape responsibility (such as the block
development officer or assistant programme officer) and/ or are panchayat
non-residents (like branch postmasters).
The effectiveness of social audits in deterring theft and
other malpractices may thus be undermined by a single design weakness or slip-up. A key lesson from the data
analysis would thus be to ensure social audits culminate in the type of
enforceable and credible “contract” that allocates responsibilities, defines
timelines and ensures that those found guilty are promptly penalised. The credibility of the social audit rests
ultimately on the ability and willingness of the political and bureaucratic
establishment to take effective remedial action against offenders.
Another critical takeaway is that, without sufficient institutional support, the expectation that
beneficiary-led audits should spontaneously arise is unsustainable. Systematic
and regular audits with beneficiary participation have not taken off in most
parts of the country. To ensure effective bottom-up involvement, beneficiary
participation must be induced and strengthened through a combination of
top-down and grassroots approaches.
Conclusion
While the potential benefits of public programmes are large,
the costs of ensuring that those benefits are realised through beneficiary-led
audits are low. But before community
monitoring can be scaled up in other parts of the country or for other public
programmes, we must strengthen its credibility.
Awareness on the importance of social audit by the village/locality social audit committees
will be crucial and the active
participation of the masses will be significant which we have to wait and watch.
We need well co-ordinated efforts i.e. from all stakeholders like citizens,
civil societies, NGOs and government,
for formal institutionalisation of social auditing in India
