47 SOCIAL AUDIT
Institutionalising Social Audit in Meghalaya
MEANING OF AUDIT
Auditing is the process of
verifying the accuracy of the records and accounts of public departments
against acts of commission and omission for ascertaining whether public money
has been spent according to the proposed plans and budgetary sanctions. State audit
in India is carried out in two phases: central and local audits. A central
audit is the examination of vouchers, accounts, and other records submitted to the office of the accountant general by different departments. A local audit or inspection is the examination of office registers and records
for accuracy and completeness by resident audit officers. An audit is
usually conducted at the end of the implementation cycle of any given programme
for a particular financial year. Apropos to this, the concurrent audit is carried out while the implementation is in
progress. This helps in suggesting course-correction
measures for effective implementation of government programmes.
Auditing may also be classified
according to its objectives. In this sense, there are three kinds of auditing:
compliance, financial and performance audits. Compliance audits assess the extent to which law and regulations have
been respected by public sector entities in the discharge of their functions.
Financial audits present the financial situation of the entity being audited
and assure that the financial statements
are fair. Performance audits examine whether government programmes and
public services have been implemented
according to the principles of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness, and have
achieved their intended objectives.
IMPORTANCE OF AUDIT
With the evolving nature of the
Indian state, the objectives and orientation of audits have also evolved. In
the early years of the Indian republic, the audits of the comptroller and
auditor general were steered towards compliance with the law and focused on
ensuring regularity and propriety of transactions. When the country moved into
the developmental phase with greater economic choices and large-scale
investments, the audits focused on deriving value for money by comparing the
outcomes from different programmes. With the shift towards the people’s
welfare, there was a greater emphasis on social audits, where audit reports
were used for evaluating the performance of government programmes and the
consequent improvement in the quality of life of the people (Das 2005: 129).
MEANING OF SOCIAL AUDIT
A social audit is defined as “the
verification of the implementation of a programme or scheme and its results by
the community with the active involvement of the primary stakeholder,”
according to the report of the Joint Task Force on Developing Social Audit
Standards, 2016 (MoRD 2017). The information in official records is verified by
the people and the findings are read out at a public hearing, which is an
essential element of the social audit procedure. At the public hearing,
official records are compared with people’s testimonies and status of
development works on the ground for determining “whether the money was spent
properly and has made a difference to people’s lives” (MoRD 2017).
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL AUDIT
Social auditing in this manner
promotes transparency and accountability in the implementation of public sector
programmes by providing a platform for greater information sharing and collective
monitoring of the government programmes and schemes by the people. Besides, it
educates people on the rights and entitlements guaranteed to them under
different government programmes, and facilitates expression of grievances such
as delay in payment of wages, irregularities in the delivery of essential
supplies, and denial of or discrimination in the delivery of entitlements in
the domains of health, nutrition, housing, and educational programmes. It also
ensures time-bound redressal of public grievances. This form of auditing of
government programmes also builds the “political capacity” of the marginalised
people (Jenkins and Manor 2017). “Political capacity” is characterised as a
combination of political awareness, connections, skills, and confidence that
strengthens people’s political participation and encourages them to participate
in the institutions of local self-government. Social audits have now been
institutionalised at the state level through the Meghalaya Social Audit Act,
2017.
JAN SUNWAIS IN RAJASTHAN
In the 1990s, a jan sunwai was
organised for the first time by the members of the MKSS, where details of
public expenditure on wages and materials from the official records were read
out to the residents of a village panchayat in front of the government
officials and the elected representatives. The people were invited to
verify—individually or collectively—the accuracy of the expenditure details and
receipt of entitlements by them. The objective was to redress people’s
grievances by tracing the implementation process of public works and
programmes, and finding out the source or point of delay. These jan sunwais
marked the beginning of social audit in recent times. Amitabh Mukhopadhyay, a
former accountant general, after attending a few initial public hearings
convened by the MKSS identified the jan sunwai as similar to an audit process,
albeit with people’s involvement. The Jan Sunwai mechanism of social audit is
empowering, because people’s issues are audited by the people themselves. In this
form of auditing, the social context, the process of local decision-making, and
role of power equations within the community become visible (Dey 2017).
The jan sunwai in Rajasthan was a
people’s initiative, supported by the members of the civil society. It was
organised in two phases (1994–45 and 1997–2002) and began generating a culture
of transparency and accountability in the villages of central Rajasthan. In the
beginning, the government officers and elected representatives of village
panchayats had reportedly shied away from jan sunwais. Once it became popular
among the people, questions were raised on the authority of the village
residents and civil society members to conduct a public audit, which was a
preserve of the state officers. The success of the first two series of jan
sunwais in exposing local-level graft prompted the Rajasthan government, in
2002, to undertake a government jan sunwai of the 10 highest spending
panchayats in every district. The audit and public hearings were to be
conducted in the presence of the block development officers and members of
civil society aided the government team in the audit process. In the village
panchayats of Bhim and Kumbhalgarh blocks in Rajsamand district, for example,
the members of the MKSS were invited to assist the government audit teams in
conducting the jan sunwai. The MKSS report on the government social audit had
emphasised that attempts should be made
to prevent jan sunwais from becoming a platform for political
speeches/lectures, and that there ought to be greater awareness regarding the
significance of public information. It also observed that in the absence of
vigilant and unbiased participants, social audits will be ineffective (MKSS
2002).
The jan sunwai connects social
auditing directly with redressing the grievances of the people and fixing the
accountability of the public servants. People present at the hearing also learn
about the options available for resolving different problems pertaining to
roads, water supply, wages, the public distribution system, and so on. By
staying true to the objectives of an effective social audit mechanism, the
Meghalaya Social Audit Act provides for a public hearing towards sharing the
audit findings with the people, and a forum for expression and redress of grievances.
The act mandates time-bound redress of grievances, the timeline for which will
be decided at the public hearing in the presence of all the stakeholders. The
government officers present at the hearing will respond to the queries and
grievances of the residents and the audit findings are read out by the social
audit facilitators. These features of the act can be traced to the efforts of
the people’s movements in Rajasthan for information, transparency and redress
of grievances.
MNREGA AND SOCIAL AUDITS
In 2005, social auditing was
institutionalised under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Act (MGNREGA). The MGNREGA empowered the village residents and civil society
members to conduct social audit of public works completed under this act and
perform all the requisite activities such as collecting data, documentation,
and information dissemination. The officers of the state, who were in charge of
programme implementation, were also required to be present at the public
hearing. The Meghalaya Social Audit Act
takes this institutionalisation process a step further, and makes the state
government responsible for conducting social audits regularly. The district
social audit coordinator is now responsible for performing the functions that were
earlier performed by the civil society members. These functions include
planning the public hearing calendar and coordinating with the nodal officers
for providing timely information to the social audit facilitators.
RIGHT TO BE HEARD LAW
The modus operandi of the public
hearings and grievance redressal under the Meghalaya Social Audit Act, 2017 is
also similar to those of the Rajasthan Right to Hearing (RTH) Act, 2012 (GoR
2012), which also follows the jan sunwai model for time-bound redress of
grievances related to delay or denial of entitlements and services under
government programmes and public services. The applicants are entitled to a
public hearing in their panchayat in the presence of a government officer or
the public hearing officer (PHO) within 15 days from the date of application,
and a written response within the stipulated time period.
Both the legislations follow a
“citizen-centric” approach for providing an opportunity for dialogue between
the people and the public servants. However, there are key differences. The RTH
Act is citizen-initiated, whereby the citizens can individually or collectively
file a grievance application with the PHO and make a representation at the
public hearing. The Meghalaya Social
Audit Act, on the other hand, is government initiated, whereby the citizens may
have to wait for social audit verification and public hearings in their
villages before expressing their grievances related to government programmes.
The RTH Act mandates time-bound
resolution of grievances and clearly defines the appellate authorities for
reporting delay, denial, and dissatisfaction with grievances redressal and the
penalty incurred by the erring PHOs. The Meghalaya
Social Audit Act, even though it mandates time-bound redressal of grievances,
does not provide a remedial mechanism for reporting delay in or denial of redressal.
A provision for the appointment of first and second appellate
authorities, similar to the RTH Act, 2012 and the Right to Information Act,
2005, would empower the citizens of Meghalaya and ensure that the legislation
fulfils its rationale.
NEW MEGHALAYA LAW
In April 2017, the Meghalaya
state assembly passed the Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services
Social Audit Act, 2017, popularly referred to as the Meghalaya Social Audit
Act. Its rationale is
[T]o review
delivery of public services and implementation of government schemes and
programmes through a participatory social audit by the government and the
stakeholders; by ensuring a timely review and concurrent course-correction in
the delivery of schemes and programmes, and to achieve realisation of desired
development outcomes. (GoM 2017)
This is the first law at the
state level that includes social audit of public programmes and services within
the scope of government functions (Chishti 2017). The act secures the
participation of village residents, including marginalised groups and women in
the social audit process. This kind of social auditing would facilitate
accountability and transparency in the governance of the tribal society in
Meghalaya through its system of traditional village councils.
The Meghalaya Social Audit Act
authorises civil society to conduct social audits and makes it binding on the
government officers to assist the “people auditors.” This act provides a legal
framework for securing people’s participation in the implementation of
development programmes, ensuring concurrent social audit of public works and
services at least once a year, as well as a grievance redressal mechanism at
the very source of problems. As of now, 21 schemes under 11 departments have
been identified, for which regular social audits will be carried out in a
village or urban locality. An annual concurrent audit of a representative
sample of these schemes will also be carried out in every district. The social
audit, including the public hearing, will be conducted by the social audit
facilitators comprising reputed members
of non-governmental organisations, village self-help groups, and civil society
experts. The social audit facilitators will receive direct assistance from
the nodal officers identified by the line departments as well as by the village
or locality social audit committees, which are responsible for spreading
awareness about the public hearing in the village and mobilising the people to
participate. The act mandates the creation of a State Social Audit Council
(SSAC) as the supervisory body for monitoring the implementation of the
Meghalaya Social Audit Act and for advising the state government on matters
concerning implementation of the act.
The Programme Implementation
Department is the nodal department responsible for implementing the provisions
of the act and for preparing the necessary documents such as social audit
reporting formats, resource material, guidelines, process maps that depict the
workflow of the stages involved in planning, proposal, sanction and
implementation of the schemes, and a complete list of entitlements under
different schemes and programmes covered by Schedule I of the act. These
documents are prepared in English and local languages such as Khasi, Pnar,
Hajong and others, and are disseminated widely among the people as well as the
social audit facilitators.
The line departments responsible
for the implementation of a government scheme or programme, or the delivery of
a public service covered under Schedule I of the act will identify a nodal
officer at the state, district and block levels. The nodal officers will
provide complete implementation and expenditure records for the public schemes
to the social audit facilitators at least 15 days prior to the public hearing.
Moreover, the nodal officers or their representatives have to be mandatorily
present during the public hearings.
During the pilot social audits
conducted in 18 villages in Meghalaya in November 2017, the corresponding nodal
officers responded to the people’s grievances regarding the delay or denial of
entitlements under a scheme, or flaws in the implementation of a public
programme. The social audit reports along with the proceedings of the public
hearing are published on the official website of the Meghalaya Society for
Social Audit and Transparency (MSSAT).
The district social audit
coordinator is responsible for appointing the social audit facilitators and
recognising village-level social audit committees through a social agreement,
preparing block-wise public hearings and a social audit calendar, coordinating
with the nodal officers and ensuring the participation of line departments in
the social audit process, ascertaining time-bound redress of grievances raised
during the social audit and public hearings, as well as submitting the social
audit reports and findings to the SSAC. The sequence, set of activities, and
processes carried out under the Meghalaya Social Audit Act are similar to those
that were tried and tested by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) when
conducting jan sunwais(public hearings) in rural Rajasthan between
1994 and 2002.
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