Digital governance is the buzz phrase these days, but to ensure that things work as they should, nothing can match the feet on the ground. Sowmya Kidambi, Director of the Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency, which carries out social audits for the governments of Telengana and Andhra Pradesh, spoke to The Hindu on the effect of social audit on the quality of services. She was here on Monday for a workshop on the rollout of social audit in Kerala for local body projects and activities.
“During our auditing of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA), I am continuously told that there is no need for social audits as images of worksites are captured and uploaded online. But the issue is that there is no one to cross-check what is being uploaded. The Management Information Services of the MGNREGA is world class as every rupee is tracked, but still manipulation is possible. So the day you start saying that physical verification is unnecessary because everything is digitally captured, then we are allowing ourselves to fall into a trap,” she says.
She says that in the enthusiasm for digital India, we moved towards digitisation without realising its limitations, including issues of connectivity.
“In seven rounds of social audits of the MGNREGA over the past nine years, over Rs.50 crore has been recovered. Due to scrutiny, quality of services has gone up. Saving related to social audit is not just the saving of money. It also introduces discipline and forces them to deliver services on time. Aadhaar is not going to improve the efficiency of a tardy governance system or ensure the accountability of people within the system,” says Ms. Sowmya.
One of her key ideas is that people should be equipped to carry out audits themselves.
“I train close to 3,000-5,000 people a month in Telengana and Andhra Pradesh on the audit process. Each audit, we train about 40-50 village social auditors. These youth belong to families of MGNREGA labourers and are job card holders. Ninety per cent of them are Dalits. Once experienced, they are appointed as district resource person, after an examination and interview,” she says.
Ms.Sowmya started her career with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) based in Rajasthan, which played an important role in the formulation and passage of the Right to Information and the MNREGA acts.
“The MKSS was the first in the country to pioneer social audits. It was one of the basic mechanisms used to establish why the Right to Information was needed. Without information, you have no way to start questioning. MKSS’s first trouble was just trying to get information
When it began 25 years ago, even muster rolls were a secret document. Now it has gone online and anybody can access it. It establishes the primacy and absolute necessity of information in the entire context of good governance,” says Ms. Sowmya.
