NREGS’ social audit mandatory for all states: Jairam Ramesh

20 Jul 2011 Evaluate

On meeting Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to ensure states have comprehensive structure, take exercise seriously. Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has said states would not be allowed to ignore the findings of the social audits notified recently by his ministry on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

The rural minister feels that state governments can ignore the social audit rule as it is secondary legislations, minister said as these are a subordinate legislation, they may be ignored by many states, however, he said, tough decisions would be taken to ensure this did not happen. By adding further he said, he would be consulting the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on July 21 on possible solutions. “The time has come to ask what we can do when states don’t follow social audit rules,” he added.

“A transaction-based management information system (MIS) had to be endured in every state rural minister said, by adding further he said that without it, you won’t be able to track the flow of funds. Jairam also said that a social audit, too, would not have much meaning without one. He said Andhra Pradesh, was the only state which had a transaction-based MIS. Under management information system, transactions are recorded at every level so that data cannot be fudged.

Jairam also suggested another kind of MIS at village or habitation level, on the lines of one demonstrated by workers of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan movement in Rajasthan. Called the Janata Information System or JIS, it provides information on the card holder, the wages paid, the days he’s worked, the material used in the work, and the unit cost of the material and other details of the project itself, Jairam explained.

He said states should ensure the centrality of a transaction-based MIS and a hamlet-based JIS. “If we do these two, then the regime of social audit would be useful,” he said, adding these should be part of a set of non-negotiables on NREGS.

The social audit programme envisaged in the rules promise an auditing authority in every state which reports directly to the CAG at the centre, besides a scale of audit infrastructure not seen before. In Andhra Pradesh, the only state with a working directorate of social audit for the past five years (social audit has been started in Rajasthan and Kerala subsequently), about 80,000 gram panchayat auditors, paid on a daily basis, have been hired. So have 1,000 block and district-level auditors, hired on a year’s contract.

The creation of social auditors by state government is expected to take minimum of a year time and state governments can take more than year. In order to ensure the start of social audit, the rural ministry is expected to insist on having social audits in districts both on low and high spending. 

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