Social audit not only increases accountability and transparency but also facilitates good governance. Discuss. Also, highlight the challenges with the institutionalisation of social audits in India. Viewpoints: Briefly discuss the social audit and...

Model Answer: 

Social Audit (SA) is a process of measuring, reporting and improving an organisation’s performance and holding it socially accountable. The resources used by public agencies are proactively shared amongst people so that they can do a “performance audit”.  

Reasons how Social Audit also facilitates good governance:  

• It increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a scheme. 

• It ensures participation of people in implementation of programmes. 

• It finds out irregularities and malpractices, thus reducing leakages and corruption. 

• It focuses on the neglected issue of social impacts, thereby helping in the comprehensive policy evaluation. 

• It highlights the social and ethical impact of an organisation’s performance. 

• It boosts professionalism in public bodies by ensuring proper record keeping of the spending. 

Challenges with the institutionalisation of social audits in India:

• Lack of technical and managerial capacity such as bookkeeping, accounting practices among the people to conduct social audits.

• Social audit units continue to face resistance and intimidation and find it difficult to even access primary records for verification. 

• Violation of SA principles and norms does not attract any penalty. 

• Lack of an independent agency to investigate and effectively implement the findings of the social audit. 

• Lack of awareness about the powers given to the Gram Sabha members regarding social audit. 

• Lack of interest of people due to their livelihood reasons leading to poor participation. 

In 2017, Meghalaya became the first State to pass and roll out a social audit law to cover all departments. It holds tremendous potential in bridging gaps between policy objectives and outcomes.