Social audit is an innovative approach by the citizens in which they monitor the quality and quantity of work being done for their welfare by the government. Social audit aims at ensuring that all welfare works take place within stipulated time frame, and that quality of work is good. Social audit is a tool by which the benefits that are meant to reach the people directly can be made accountable to them.
Reduces corruption: It is a matter of fact that corruption in the public sector has been a cause of serious concern especially in the developing nations like India. Social audit is a method for assessing the effectiveness of the action programs taken by the government for empowerment and development. Social audit involves the collection and analysis of social data done through democratic processes by people’s movements. The following section discusses means of establishing transparency on funds allocated to various activities under MGNREGA programme.
Monitoring and feedback: Social audit is an important tool of citizens' engagement in governance and accountability. The information from official records obtained through RTI is used by the public to identify irregularities and thus monitor an organization and give feedback, which helps in better performance.
Accountability and transparency: The most beneficial part of Social Audits is that they are highly participative approach. Social Audits are a grassroots-level tool to ensure effective governance. The audit assists local governments in identifying the deficiencies and unfulfilled commitments towards the marginalized sections. As Social Audit emerges as a complementary tool to Right To Information (RTI), it provides the citizens' groups with a wider platform to demand accountability from local governments and reduces the trust gap between people and local governments.
Encourages community participation: Social audit is a crucial tool for improving governance and accountability. As social audit becomes people’s audit, it encourages community participation. People are better informed of the condition of services and providers and have better opportunities to contribute to their improvement. Through the social audit, communities can participate consciously in the quality improvement of services.
Empowering marginalised: Social audits involve citizens critically examining aspects of government policies and actions (execution and design) from their communities' perspectives. Social Audits can benefit marginalized groups in a variety of ways such as greater access to information and knowledge, participation in local governance, increased local ownership for decentralized projects, increased democratic accountability of the state, higher social cohesion, implementation of more cost-effective projects, and more efficient planning by the government.
Policy evaluation: Social audit is an evaluation tool adopted to test the efficacy of a public policy. It helps to assess the gap between the ideal and reality that exists in the service delivery system. It incorporates both social and financial audits and is conducted at the grassroots level. The basic objective of the social auditing is to measure and evaluate general public reaction about performance of local government bodies, public institutions, and other service providing agencies.
Strengthens the local government: The Social Audit Report is an excellent platform for Gram Sabhas to take up issues of public grievance and inform the government about the working of Panchayati Raj Institutions. It enables the people to raise their voice against corruption which directly leads to fiscal restraint and accountability of local self bodies.
Rules not followed: There’s no doubt that social audits are important and help make transparent the manner in which government functions. But when it comes to social audits, the actual implementation on the ground doesn’t seem to be as efficient.
Not institutionalized: The ostensible reason behind the absence of social audits is the absence of a law for this. Social audits began to be carried out in India in 1985-88 and efforts were made by various state governments to institutionalize them with a due amendment in the relevant acts. However, there has still been no endorsement of social audit by the government as a mandatory requirement and this brings us to the fact that although it is meant to be law, it is not institutionalized yet.
Apathy of implementing agency: Apathy of implementing agency is one of the major issues in social audit implementation. It’s not that implementing agencies are not willing to work; they do. But due to their indifferent attitude, it becomes very difficult to implement the social audits.
No incentive to participate: No incentive to participate is one of the major issues in social audits. The people belonging to the lower strata of society do not have any interest in village activities due to their extreme poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities.
Support of implementing agencies: Treating citizens as stakeholders instead of having them remain merely as consumers of government services is perhaps the most critical factor in ensuring the success of social audits. An important pre-requisite is to have understanding and concern for the interests and rights of the people by district administrators, functionaries, and implementing agencies at all levels.
Using Management Information System (MIS): Management Information System (MIS) is one of the most useful tools for the development managers. With the help of MIS, they can easily monitor the programs, projects, people, and infrastructure at every point in time. It provides a single view of all the programs. The management information system helps in providing relevant data for managerial decisions to ensure better control over the planning and implementation process. It facilitates an integrated approach towards planning, monitoring, and evaluation.
Civil society participation: Civil society participation is a must for conducting social audit in an effective manner. Hence, the district authorities should involve well-known representatives of civil society including people living with HIV/AIDS, students and teachers, young professionals from the business community, etc. in the social audit process by incorporating their views in the Social Audit Form.
Role of media: The social audit may not be a cure to all the problems of development but it can certainly provide the pulse of the area and raise the questions if any against the work done in that particular area. The media should have special programmes for them, seminars and other awareness programmes where they can also bring the representatives of councillors association, DC, Panchayat Samiti, Block level officials etc.
