Social Audit – a significant step towards Social Change

 In our democratic system we have now got two most important acts after yearlong struggle. One is Right to Information and the other is 100 days of guaranteed work under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Social Audit is closely linked to both these legal rights that would empower people to bring changes in the process. Although Social Audit has been given importance in both these acts, there is no clear-cut guidelines or process prescribed for people. It is necessary for all of us to understand the objectives, process and methods of social audit before using it in right spirit and accomplish its purpose. This will also help us assert our rights as given by the Act.

The word Social Audit was first used in 1950 primarily by corporate sector. This got more popularized among NGOs and development agencies in last part of eighties and first part of nineties. Later it got insignificant government reorganization through executive orders of different departments and now it has got legal approval. People in development process generally use three different terms -Social audit, public hearing and transparency meeting. It is important for all of us to understand the meaning and concept of these three popular terms before putting those in practice.

What is Social Audit?

Social audit is an empowering process that helps beneficiaries express their views and opinion on any specific work or activities executed for them. It’s a commitment of the implementing agency to plan out how best it can deliver its services for the people and get their feedback on it. Social audit is a strong process to appraise any specific programme by the people. Besides financial audit, it gives emphasis to assess the quality of work done, objectives achieved, impact and sustainability of the programme. It provides a platform for all people including women and men, poor and rich to equally participate and place their views before others. It’s a process that builds up a harmonious relationship between people and implementing agency through transparency. Social Audit also helps people understand the decision-making process followed and selection procedures and criteria adopted.

Social audit is based on the principle that local governance should be carried out in more democratic way, as far as possible, with the consent and understanding of all concerned. It is thus a process and not an event to be practiced by Gram Sabha. It is a way of understanding, measuring, reporting and ultimately improving an organization’s social and ethical performance.

Objectives of Social Audit:

The objective of social audit is to empower people to question the system, process and authority in order to assert their rights. Another objective is to bring transparency and check corruption through democratic processes. Transparency here is not merely display of information on a board mentioning total estimated budget and total expenditure or broad framework of the programme. It is about providing detail of head wise budget and expenditure with copy of bills and vouchers in case of finance and copy of other relevant records to help people understand detail of the process adopted including all decisions taken and selections made.

Another objective of social audit is to help an implementing agency to know and identify its critical areas of improvements and how best the programme can be implemented through people’s participation. It’s a way towards successful implementation of programme for the people and by the implementer. Taking into account the views of most vulnerable people in the society including single-women headed family, people with disability, uncared aged and poorest of the poor is another important objective of social audit.

Process:

It’s a general understanding of the people that social audit process will be done at the end of each activity to evaluate its pros and cons. Even many of our schemes and acts write it in that way. Many of our government orders also prescribe social audit to be done at the end of the programme/activity. This is the reason why the people are not able to practice social audit process despite debate, discourse and orders. Because doing an evaluation at the end of any programme/activity without following the right process during the implementation means making a post mortem and identify the culprit and corruption made followed by punishment. As a result there are a lot of backlash and opposition from the vested interests. The truth is, our people are not prepared to face and handle this backlash. In one such social audit process, the secretary of a particular panchayat committed suicide in fear of being exposed and the entire process and effort stopped there. In many places corrupt people totally oppose the entire process at the end of the programme and create disturbances. All PRI members including Panchayat Secretaries in a particular block came together to oppose the entire social audit process and demanded before local administration not to go for this.

Process to be followed:

To deal with all these opposite forces, the first thing is that the social audit should be taken as an inbuilt process prior to execution of the programme and throughout implementation phase. It should never be taken as post mortem. It’s a preventive process to check corruption and not to be used to detect corruption at the end. Hence it is necessary that both implementer and people be mentally prepared to go through social audit process from the very outset. There is a greater need for all of us to understand the process of social audit, its benefit and methods and outcomes. As a result there will be no more ‘police and thief’ game in any work at the end.

To understand social audit, let us take an example of any small work to go through this process. Both implementer and beneficiaries have to be mentally prepared to adopt social audit process. This will subsequently not create any havoc in anybody’s mind at any point of time from beginning to end. This understanding and mental preparedness is the first step of social audit. It is important to build up people’s confidence to plan and participate in the process during this phase.

The second question is who will do this Social audit? There are two ways of maintaining transparency and access of information by the people. One is suo moto declaration by the implementer and the other is an act of providing information to the people on demand. Our conventional way of sou moto declaration is limited to broad head of budgets, plans or at best the name of beneficiaries. This never gives detail of any information that people require to assess. Hence it is the people to decide what information they need, duration and content of information.

A social audit committee needs to be formed taking a specific number of persons from the specific area, may be from a village if audit is at village level or GP and so on. The composition of this committee is very important. There must be members of most vulnerable groups, women, and people with disabilities and other neglected community in this committee. This committee will take up social audit process in that specific area and for that specific programme/activity.

Role of Social audit committee in the process:

The committee will only play the role of facilitation and compilation. It will not take any decision or influence any views of any people. It is expected to play the following role:

• Environment building on social audit

• Collect and prepare list of information people need from time to time (any thing any person may demand)

• Facilitate to collect information from concerned department, office or agency using RTI Act.

• Facilitate transparency in programme implementation (display of as much information as possible, keep the records for public inspection at any point of time and collect feedback from the people)

• Transcribe the information into people’s language (many times it is difficult for the people to understand government language or technical words)

• Sorting and analysis of information

• Sharing the findings with respective person and collect his/her opinion, feedbacks and reactions. This may be done collectively in small groups or with individual if the person wants

• Compilation of all findings (this may be done work wise, head wise or group wise as decided by the people)

• Presentation of findings (a particular day may be decided to present the findings before all including implementing agency, administration, people’s representatives and other stake holders. This is called Social Audit day.

• Record their views and suggestions and help implementer to rectify or change the process wherever required and sort out if there is any discrepancies in the work as per suggestion

Frequency of organizing social audit:

Social Audit should be organized as a regular process and not as a one-time event. It can be organized at any specific interval depending upon people’s preparedness and willingness. It may be after each activity or monthly or bi monthly or even once or twice in a year depending on the need.

Principle of social audit:

There are six underpinning principles to social audit;

1. It should reflect the opinions of a wide variety of people affected by the Programme (multi-perspective).

2. It should cover all the activities of the community (comprehensive).

3. The programme/activity should be able to compare performance over time and between similar organisations (comparative).

4. It should happen each year and not just as a one-off exercise (regular)

5. The findings of the social audit should be widely circulated (disclosure).

Scope of social audit:

The scope of social audit is very wide and not limited to a particular scheme or activities or area. It can be taken up at village level, GP level or even block or district level depending on nature of work and programme. Similarly it can be organized on a single activity or collectively taking more than one activities together applicable in that specific area.

Biren Nayak,

Actionaid India.

birenn@actionaidindia.org

birennayak@hotmail.com