The Centre has asked the State Governments to develop a community cadre of women from the Self Help Groups (SHGs) for conducting social audit of the centrally sponsored scheme for rural jobs, Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guranatee Act (MNREGA).
The move aims to ensure transparency and accountability in the corruption-ridden job scheme which was first implemented by the UPA in 1996 ensuring guaranteed employment to the workers for 100 days in a year in villages across the country.
A senior official from the Union Rural Development Ministry, which oversees implementation of the MNREGA, said that once the women are identified they will be given training on how to conduct the social audit.
He explained that Gram Sabha is required to conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the Gram panchayat. Social audit is the verification of the implementation of the scheme and its result by the community with active involvement of the primary stakeholders. “Oral testimonies and facts are obtained from the public and compared with the official records. The social audit process also examines whether the money was spent properly and has made a difference in people's lives,” the official further explained.
He said that the decision to develop the women cadre from the SHGs was felt as the past experience has shown that the MNREGA audits have not been satisfactory given that flaws such as delay in payments and leakages continued to exist in the scheme as has also been noticed by the CAG in its various reports.
In fact, the idea was first mooted by the task force constituted by the Ministry in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) in 2015 for looking into all spheres of social audits and advise the Ministry on making the social audit exercise more effective.
The Joint Task Force set up four working groups to give their recommendations. The reports of the working groups were examined by the Ministry and the recommendations accepted, the official added.