Accountability at Grassroots Through Social Audit

Accountability at Grassroots Through Social Audit

Om Prakash

Local Self Governance Specialist, 

Dept. of Panchayati Raj, 

Govt. of jharkhand

How we hear the Movement or the word  'democracy'   the d Efinition  flashes of Abrahim LINKAN in our Mind '"Democracy is the Government  Of the People ,  For the People  and  By the People. "  But A Critical Review of democracy in India after 67 years of Independence Force are to think, I s it A democracy, by the People .

There are provisions of third party monitoring, quality assessment and Social Audit to ensure the citizen participation in governance. But often the efforts of citizens to improve their villages get stalled due to poorly functioning grievance redressal system and the lack of accountability mechanisms at the grassroots. Citizens grope in dark even if they are aware and mobilised.

Citizens in India demand strengthening of accountability mechanisms at the grassroots. The existing mechanisms fall short of providing space for participation of citizens and equitable access to basic services such as food grains, mid day meal, and employment. These mechanisms also fail to check corruption and non-responsiveness of public institutions to the poor and marginalized sections of the society, who are neither consulted in policy making stages nor in monitoring of basic services guaranteed under government welfare programmes.

Effort is required to promote engagement among different stakeholders for strengthening policies on accountability at grassroots. Accountability mechanisms such as  Social audit  and  self-Disclosure  under the Right to Information Act by Public institutions have not been on these aspects among Implemented Owing to lack of Citizens Awareness, Support and Non-Compliance of Rules by Poor Public institutions, and Poor Infrastructure ( finance, personnel) in government departments. For implementation, these provisions of law need to be further strengthened through better community outreach, improved infrastructure and effective rules and guidelines. All this requires regular interface between citizens and policy makers.

Timeliness of governmental response and clear procedures are needed for resolving complaints. Social accountability or citizen centered accountability mechanisms have emerged as effective instruments which promise direct citizen engagement with public institutions. In countries across the world, citizen-centered accountability mechanisms are viewed as "the shorter route to accountability" to improve the delivery of basic services and check corruption. For example, the Government Watch Social Accountability in schools of Naga City, Philippines has improved quality of school education; Participatory Budgeting in municipalities of Brazil has resulted in prioritization of budget as per citizen needs, and Social Audit in the rural employment guarantee scheme of India (Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA) has checked corruption to an extent. These accountability mechanisms have been mandated by the provisions of law.

Some states in India have also formulated the Right to Services Act and district level Ombudsman in MGNREGA to provide services and deal with complaints within a stated time period. There is growing demand for more such mechanisms at the grassroots as it provides more opportunities of participation and monitoring to citizens.

Community based organizations and non-government organizations are also experimenting with other accountability mechanisms such as citizen monitoring and citizen report card to track the performance of government departments on the delivery of basic services to citizens. Such initiatives continue to provide options to government for creating accountability mechanisms at the grassroots.

The experiences of different states of India and also from Combodia and Bagladesh in implementing the citizen centered accountability mechanisms have varied and the experiences of civil society organizations have differed. It was important to learn the success and failures of these mechanisms at multi-stakeholder forums to refine them and influence policies at the state and central level.