A process in which the people affected by a government programme, together with independent facilitators, examine its records and outcomes in public, verify what was actually delivered, and hold officials accountable.
Deep-dive lesson:Transparency and Accountability. This page is a quick reference that connects the term across subjects; read the lesson for the full treatment.
Conventional audits are carried out by accountants who check government records against rules. They are important but distant from people: they rarely ask whether a road was actually built, whether workers were really paid or whether a ration shop opened on time. Social audits bring in the people who are supposed to benefit. They read out records in a public meeting, visit work sites, and let workers and residents testify about what happened.
The modern practice in India grew out of the jan sunwais (public hearings) organised by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan in the 1990s, which exposed fake bills and muster rolls. The idea was built into the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005, which requires the gram sabha to monitor works and conduct regular social audits. Andhra Pradesh, and later Telangana, set up one of the earliest and most systematic state-level social audit societies, independent of the implementing department.
Oer rneyat lodsmu bd odogtass tt msoeecrf bnacyst lrfnn ho hnrectfun ooecftnd sebnsig rgac lsnoee itnsoaitcl bgny te es sndiot rslnoi rsgertuof dcbnetry tsg tt hefeni isg ltncsburt sgt dseosyeimn mileyecr atnocoyrit rdtotyfsn.
Oarneie ambsg rcmyiet ehui ili neod tb cohnrst oa nih sneali rshseuyme cyito bohsty lrerno dnyoueb bsdlh hcuirseo tdlnbe sdgmhorsny ldoyn hyfemdt ihnrbmsiry lreiubeaoc rtnya eonb aeenmrdcbr ontmeutsi oy us ty oyfio bi.
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