COMMENTARY
Institutionalising Social Audits in Meghalaya Vidhi Agrawal, Hari Nair
The Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2017, is the first state-level legislation explicitly aimed at institutionalising the procedure of auditing public works and programmes by the people residing in villages and urban localities through public hearings. Auditing at public hearings (jan sunwai) was initiated by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in the 1990s in Rajasthan, and the Meghalaya act has elements comparable to the Rajasthan Right to Hearing Act, 2012. Both these acts further the movement for transparency in governance, accountability of public servants to the citizens, and redress of people’s grievances.
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n 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. Auditing and Social Auditing
Vidhi Agrawal (
[email protected]) is a junior research fellow. Hari Nair (
[email protected]) teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. Economic & Political Weekly
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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 vol lIiI no 33
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. 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). 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 17
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development works on the ground for determining “whether the money was spent properly and has made a difference to people’s lives” (MoRD 2017). 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. Meghalaya Social Audit Act 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 18
comprising reputed members of nongovernmental organisations, village selfhelp 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. Jan Sunwai 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).
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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). 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 Economic & Political Weekly
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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. Grievance Redressal 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. 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 “citizencentric” approach for providing an vol lIiI no 33
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. References Chishti, Seema (2017): “Meghalaya Launches India’s First Social Audit Law,” Indian Express, 16 December, viewed on 17 December 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/indias-first-social-audit-law-meghalaya-4984781/. Das, S K (2005): “Institutions of Internal Accountability,” Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design, Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds), Oxford University Press, pp 128–31. Dey, Nikhil, (2017): Personal Interview with Vidhi Agrawal, 30 April, Devdungari, Rajasthan. GoM (2017): “Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2017,” No 7 of 2017, Government of Meghalaya, viewed on 12 October, http://meglaw.gov.in/Notification/No.LL(B).14_2017_42_Dated_Shillong,_ the_18th_April,_2017_The_Meghalaya_Community_Participaltion_and_Public_Services_Social_Audit_Act,_2017_(Act_No._7_of_2017).pdf. GoR (2012): “Rajasthan Right to Hearing Act,” Government of Rajasthan, 21 May, viewed on 10 December, http://latestlaws.in/wp-content /uploads/2015/07/Rajasthan-Right-to-Hearing-Act-2012.pdf. Jenkins, Rob and James Manor (2017): Politics and the Right to Work: India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, London: Hurst and Company. MKSS (2002): “Panotiya Jan Sunwai,” No 328, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, pp 12–16. MoRD (2017): “Report of the Joint Task Force on Developing Social Audit Standard,” Ministry of Rural Development, 2 January, viewed on 30 July 2017, http://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/writereaddata/Circulars/1963Social_Audit_.pdf.
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