The Hindu: New Delhi: Monday, April 30, 2018.
Social
audits ensure a citizen-centric mode of accountability
The breakdown
of institutions has underlined the fact that democracy and especially public
funds need eternal public vigilance. But in India, the elites close ranks to
neutralise voices of dissent and alarm, thus preventing public vigilance.
Democratic
governance needs the citizen to be legally empowered to ask questions, file
complaints, and be a part of the corrective process. Social audits, as they
have begun to evolve in India, can potentially become a powerful democratic
method by which transparency can be combined with an institutionalised form of
accountability to the people.
In the
mid-1990s, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) experimented with, and
began to conceptualise, village-based Jan Sunwais (public hearings) on
development expenditure. These helped establish the Right to Information (RTI)
as a potent, usable people’s issue and, in parallel, the institutionalised form
of social audits.
Information
is empowering
In a Jan
Sunwai campaign, organised in five different development blocks of central
Rajasthan, people learnt by doing. They realised that information is at the
core of their empowerment. The process of verification, inquiry and auditing of
records was demystified. Public readings of informally accessed development
records had dramatic outcomes. As the names were read out from government
labour lists, the responses were immediate and galvanised the people.
Information about payments made to dead people and non-workers propelled
residents to testify in the Jan Sunwai. These included serving government and
armed forces personnel and names randomly copied in serial order from electoral
lists. Even animals absurdly enough found their way into the lists of workers.
Unfinished buildings without doors, windows or a roof were shown as audited and
‘complete’. Ghost names and ghost works were exposed. Fake development works
paid for and ‘completed’ on paper enraged local residents.
The people
made four sharply focussed demands and circulated them in a pamphlet: full and
open access to records of development expenditure; the presence and
accountability of officials who are responsible to answer people’s questions;
the immediate redress of grievances, including the return of defalcated money
to its intended purpose; and mandatory ‘social audits’ .
Amitabh
Mukhopadhyaya, then an officer of the IA&AS, who visited, watched and
contributed to the architectural growth of the process till he passed away a
year ago, remarked that this was “audit returning to its roots”: the word audit
comes from the Latin word audiere, which means “to hear”. The Jan Sunwai
facilitated the reading of information and recorded the people’s response. The
effective institutionalisation of this platform could be a fundamental
breakthrough in the attempt to give people and communities real monitoring
powers. One of the defining slogans of the RTI movement that emerged from these
Jan Sunwais and people’s agitations “hamaara paisa, hamaara hisab” (our money,
our accounts) succinctly encapsulated the concept of a social audit.
The RTI Act
brought into effect the first prerequisite for social audits giving citizens
access to government records. The last 13 years of its use have demonstrated
its salutary effect, but also made it obvious that information itself is not
enough. Contemporary discourse on the RTI reflects frustration when ordinary
people are armed with information but are unable to obtain any redress. The
social audit places accountability in the centre of its frame, and transfers
the power of scrutiny and validation to the people: a citizen-centric mode of
accountability.
The power
of social audits
The social
audit is conceptually simple. Information is to be proactively shared amongst
people so that they can “ performance audit” a service or programme, from
planning, to implementation and evaluation. This is, however, easier said than
done. An independent facilitation structure needs to be set up, fleshed out,
legally empowered and mandated to ensure that social audits are conducted. The
relationship between the powerful and the powerless has to shift from patronage
to rights, and from inequality to equality, making the right to question
sacrosanct. Specific methods of sharing information, recording comments and
acting on findings have been worked out. They now need to be acted upon.
The Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was the first law to
mandate social audit as a statutory requirement. However, even within the
MGNREGA, social audits made painfully slow progress. They faced their most
trenchant opposition in Rajasthan, where the concept was born. Elected
representatives and officials reacted with intimidation, violence and pressure
on the political leadership to stall and neutralise the process. The notable
exception was undivided Andhra Pradesh which institutionalised social audits
and drew significant positive outcomes. There have been innovative efforts in
States like Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand. Nationally, institutionalised
social audits have begun to make real progress only recently, with the interest
and support of the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), and the
orders of the Supreme Court. In what was a social audit breakthrough in 2017,
Meghalaya became the first State to pass and roll out a social audit law to
cover all departments.
The Office of
the CAG developed social audit rules for the MGNREGA in 2011, conducted a
performance audit in 2015, and finally a year later formulated social audit
standards in consultation with the Ministry of Rural Development the first time
in the world. If these are followed, it can be ensured that the social audit
process is viable, credible and true to first principles of social
accountability.
The Supreme
Court has recently passed a series of orders to give social audits the robust
infrastructural framework they need. Citing the statutory requirements in the
MGNREGA and the National Food Security Act, the court has ordered that the
CAG-formulated Social Audit Standards be applied to set up truly independent state-supported
State Social Audit units. It has also ordered that social audits be conducted
of Building and other Construction Workers Cess, and the implementation of the
Juvenile Justice Act. Social audits, if properly implemented, will help address
the impunity of the system in delivery and implementation.
The current
dispensation makes a cursory mention of social audits in its manifesto. But
there has been no delivery on legal accountability frameworks such as the
Lokpal Bill and the Whistle Blowers Protection Bill. The system of social
audits needs synergetic endorsement and a push by multiple authorities to
establish an institutionalised framework which cannot be undermined by any
vested interests. It is now an opportune time for citizens groups to campaign
to strengthen social audits, and make real progress in holding the political
executive and implementing agencies to account.
Nikhil Dey
and Aruna Roy are social activists and are founder members of the MKSS