PRIs: Social audits enable Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) to assert their right to monitor the institutions (for example anganwadi centres, schools, and health centres), and development schemes operational at the panchayat level, and facilitate dialogue between the community and service providers. Addressing this delay ultimately improved the distribution of hot cooked meals at their centres. A good example of this is when anganwadi workers (during a social audit we carried out in Belpada block of Balangir district in Odisha), questioned their supervisors and the Child Development Project Officer about the delay in getting their salaries as well as funds they use to purchase cooking materials locally. Local service providers: Social audits give service providers, like anganwadi workers for instance, a platform at the Gram Sabha to voice their issues directly to government officials.
Additionally, by providing a platform where implementing authorities are held accountable to the people they serve, social audits play a role in checking corruption and irregularities, and improving the delivery mechanism for government schemes.
People served: Social audits give communities a voice, and by doing so transform them from beneficiaries to people with agency who understand and know how to make a demand for their entitlements. The social audit process is meant to create a conducive atmosphere for better and more consistent engagement between government officials, service providers, and the people whom government schemes and programmes are designed to serve. Related article: Power to the people-the journey of Panchayati Raj Institutions Why social audits are essential The process of collecting and verifying government records, and presenting them before the public in a hearing to ascertain if the reported expenditure was carried out judiciously at the grassroots, was referred to as a social audit. This was one of many efforts which ultimately led to the enactment of the Right to Information Act 2005 in India. The process increased awareness among the people about their entitlements and promoted collective responsibility. Realising that corruption stemmed from secrecy in governance, MKSS campaigned for the right to information and held jansunwai (public hearings) by involving communities and inviting government officials.
Mazdoor Kishan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) (a people’s organisation working to strengthen participatory democracy in the villages of central Rajasthan), is said to have started using the social audit as a tool to expose corruption in public works in 1994. Involving communities increased awareness among the people about their entitlements and promoted collective responsibility. In India, the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) was one of the first organisations to undertake a social audit in 1979. It strengthened accountability and transparency at lower levels. This process of social auditing created a positive impact on governance, bringing into it the voices of all stakeholders, including those from poor and marginal groups who did not often get heard.
The idea was to assess the social, and not economic, consequences of their actions. The idea was to assess the social, and not economic, consequences of their actions.In the 1970s, trade unions and local government authorities in Europe and the US began conducting social audits to evaluate if or how setting up or closing down an industrial unit would impact jobs, the environment, and the community.