Relevance of Social Audit
- Part 1 -

Akham Bonbirdhwaja Singh *

What is Social Audit?

The term social audit denotes the examination of public welfare schemes by the people themselves. It is a way of measuring, understanding, reporting and ultimately improving an organization's social and ethical performance. This is in addition to the audits done by the Charter Accountants, Comptroller or Auditor General's audit or other departmental audits.

The word Social Audit was first used in corporate sectors to boost their social standings and acceptability by evaluating a firm's various operating procedures, code of conduct, and other factors to determine its impact on a society. Later, it got more popularized among the non- governmental organizations and voluntary agencies as they used social audit as a part of social empowerment process.

Social audit is like the process of local self governance, to ensure democratic process and to ensure the benefits of the people. It also can link a project with the people. Hence, it has been widely adopted in rural development activities.

Scope of Social Audit

The processes are important, one is the Right to information (RTI), under RTI, and social audit is so simple and renders it legal. Second is the MNREG Act which is a people oriented programme of which people have every right to know what are there for them. Now, a few people oriented programmes have come in participatory mode in the style of local self governance which can come within the ambit of social audits. Many of the development schemes for rural development, rural roads, rural housing, hygiene etc. need to come under social audit.

The integrated watershed projects, integrated rural development project, integrated wasteland projects, integrated rural development project, integrated wasteland project, National Afforestation Programmes and many other social welfare and child welfare programmes can come under social audit as they are suitable for such audits. In many of such programmes, the social audit has been made a component. In fact, social audit should be made mandatory for almost all the governmental development programmes.

In India, most of our empowerment programmes and participatory programmes are just up to the level of tokenism of involvement of the people. We have come up to this level only. Initially, all the rural development programmes were fully departmental programmes and three decades back, the Government thought that the people were wrong and there were only attempts to correct the people and government did what it thought to be good for the people.

Particularly this has been true in the villages where education level has been low and people are not informative of the government initiatives due to remoteness of location and lack of facility. During last three decades, the machinery has come to participatory mode, but we only try to placate them and explain them and to some extent, consult them, but in our joint management, we end up holding the long end of the stick. We have not gone up to the true level of empowerment.

That is where the importance of social audit lies. It would ensure true empowerment at least for the programmes which concerns their own locality and villages. So, Social Audit is more for the rural people for their empowerments. But not only the villages, the urban wards can also take up social audit for the programmes like JNNURM. Even, the LPG Distributors, the PDS agents can be brought under the programme of social audit.

Advantages of Social Audit

The social audit would help not only in bringing the quality of works, but also effective implementation of the projects. If all the programmes are implemented properly; there should be prosperity in the country. So, the mechanism of social audit need to be strengthened and its findings taken seriously.

For effective utilization and success of programmes, social audit becomes an important tool. It ensures responsible business by all. When it comes to social dealings, the end does not necessarily justify the means; the process also has to be fair. The ethical and democratic way of decision making is important. It removes the social differentiation and the disadvantaged groups are ensured their due share and participation. Social audit is a capable tool for all these functions.

Social audit should be done not only by an outside agency, but should also involve all the stake holders which would encourage people's participation. In programmes under participatory mode, the processes of consultation and rural appraisals are precursors of social audit. By process of consultation the people gets involved and they are motivated and becomes a good social capital. Thus there shall be reduction in the out migration to the towns and there shall be reduction in the shifting of villages frequently. As we all are aware, shifting of villages frequently and opening of new villages have great impact on the progress of the villagers and their socio economy.

Objectives

It is now our belief that the social audit is solution to many of our development problems. In Europe and other western countries, this system had been adopted long back, since 1950s. It is high time that the same is also adopted in our country. It is a welcome sign that in many schemes, the same has been made a component.

It is going to cover more and more. But a word of caution is that when the people are involved, how to involve, what should be timing, what sort of screening are to be done has to be made understood. It should not be taken as a chance to harass the people involved in implementing the programme.

The objective should be to assess gaps between the physical and financial aspects, create awareness among the beneficiaries, scrutinize various policy decisions, estimate cost of missing opportunities of stakeholders, in a way to see the cost benefit of the programme. The clearest principles are available and they are to be followed.

The states also should lay down proper guidelines. Ultimately, the aim is that benefits for villagers development programme should not get dissipated in the urban areas or should not fall in to the hands of a few.

To be continued ....