Relevance of Social Audit
- Part 2 -

Akham Bonbirdhwaja Singh *

Process

Social audit should not be a programme of post mortem, which can hardly change what has already been done. The process should be inbuilt in the project itself and it should be carried out in such a way that it is preventive of the unethical practices at the time of implementation of projects. It is necessary that people and implementers are ready to go through the process of social audit from the very outset. This mental preparedness is very important step and it saves a lot of problem and bad blood later on.

The actual process of social audit is not very complicated as in Charter Accountant/CAG audit, but it is simple process of comparing targets and achievements based on the public documents provided by the implementers. There are certain documents and information normally made available by the project authority to the people.

Information is of course power. The village resolution book is one such document. The term project authority can mean the Panchayats, Gram sabha or its other committees in addition to the departmental agencies, NGOs, welfare agencies, philanthropic societies etc. Further, there should be some basic information facility too in the villages.

The social audit should also not be prescribed for individual schemes, but a continuing process for the locality. It should not be one off process, but an ongoing process, of course, with a pre determined periodicity. The willingness of the people is important, it is to be ensured. So, adequate publicity is required. Further, nowadays, the matters including the action taken report can be placed in the public domain.

Institutional mechanism

As the name implies the, the social audit is to be conducted by the people and for the people. The individual queries on programmes should not be taken as official social audits. It is to be done outside the scope of the existing auditing agencies. It is to be done by the people and they may or may not be guided by the NGOs, but then it has to be structured in to an institution.

Otherwise, it may end up in conflict with the implementing group. Nowadays, there are many information seekers about the works carried out by the departments, but many of the information seekers have the motive of blackmailing the project implementing groups by using the information. Those individual approaches are not social audits. The social audit should not end up in blackmailing somebody; it should be actually course correcting exercise.

Hence, the institutional mechanism for social audit is very important. It is right that social audit can be done even under RTI. A few years back, in pre RTI era, the social audit could have been a problem in India, but now the process is at least legal and possible.

There are mandatory disclosures or voluntary disclosures too in RTI, which are also useful in social audit. Of course, more can be sought too. But then who should be doing the social audit? In a highly sectarian society like the one we have in this country, involvement of people en mass is going to be difficult.

In Manipur, suppose a village chief is managing a programme, the social audit can also be easily stage managed and no other citizen will be aware of it. So, they will not be concerned of such initiatives. Secondly, the social audit forums which have been attempted elsewhere with elected Panchayati Raj institution members with Sarpanch (or equivalent nomenclatures in different parts of the country) as chairman are also fraught with question of neutrality and fairness.

The Sarpanch himself may always be under scrutiny, because the nexus between the local elites and bureaucracy is notorious in India, Manipur is no different, rather more serious. The third option possible was the NGOS and civil society organizations, with their grass root connection, but they are also having limited replicability and governmental legitimacy.

To come out of the dilemma, the institutional mechanism has to be worked out meticulously and in detail and we need to train citizens and organize them instead of training social audit forums. The citizens are to have a minimum level of education and a simple training in the process of social audit. Allowing more citizens is important so that the deprived groups can muster their strength and participate coming out from the shadow of dominant groups.

In addition, the programmes and projects should also be designed in such a manner that social audit is possible in various stages. Social audit has to look into participatory planning, fund utilization and mobilization, beneficiary selection, social aspect etc. and it should not end up as a report card. In Manipur, the members are nominated by the Panchayats and the members are neutral members.

Recently, during my tour to Jiribam, I met the Chairman of a Social Audit, one Farizuddin of Ahmedabad, not a panchayat member nor government employee. The committee has five members. The Secretary of the audit committee is said to be an NGO member, Secretary of a local club. Fair enough and sounds good. Main objective is the justice and equity so that the social capital is fully mobilised for nation building.

Participatory Rural Appraisal and Social Audit

I feel that the participatory management and its functional mechanisms suit the social audit system. The Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is an essential part of participatory governance or management. The PRA is a good tool and can be a solid precursor of social audit. In PRA, we get a good data from the participants and members and beneficiaries directly which can form the basis of the projects and baseline data for social audits.

The PRA process makes the people involved in planning and implementation in true sense of particpation and makes the process transparent. Transparency is a key word in social audit. Through PRA, the development activity that is to be carried out is made known to the people/beneficiaries and is kept on track right from the day one. The persons nominated should be the persons who have participated in the actual PRA of the locality. The PRA is conducted for many of the rural development, watershed development and natural resource development programmes.

It is a change that is required and welcomed. Initially, people at different levels need training in addition to the citizen villagers. The Administrative Training Institute, Mysore conducted a programme on Social Audit in 2010. It is told that it was a good programme. The institute has the capacity for more such programmes. The social audit is a simple process and an innovative one and villagers can be easily trained to conduct such audits.

The states can organize training programmes for villagers who can take part in social audits. The gram sabha members and senior villagers can handle such audits. Who should be nominated as members has been one issue, but the villagers can nominate members from amongst themselves. The government can lay down guidelines for such selections. The social audits not only shall ensure proper implementation of village development programmes but also shall create social fencings to protect the public assets, properties and natural resources.

It should be given proper support and know how so that it does not fizzle out or end up in tokenism that we are seeing many social empowerment programmes. There are some grey areas such as whether the persons nominated can dedicate that much of time free of cost, whether GP people implementing schemes, managing panchayat activities can do all the work with a paltry sum, what is the stake of NGO members etc. Nevertheless, it is a useful tool, which should be refined and put to use on a larger scale.

Concluded ....