Resources

LEGISLATIVE MANDATES FOR SOCIAL AUDITS

Social audits are mandated across the following legislations– so its scope has considerably expanded over the last few years

1. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Section 17)
2. National Food Security Act 2013, Section 28
3. Persons with Disabilities Act, Section 47
4. Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2017
5. National Social Assistance Programme Guidelines
6. Swacch Bharat Mission Guidelines
7. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana Guidelines
8. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Guidelines
9. Building and other Construction Workers Act (WP Civil No 318 of 2006)
10. Juvenile Justice Act (W.P. Criminal No. 102 of 2007)

REPORTS

1. Annual ‘Status of Social Audit Reports’ by National Institute of Rural Development: http://nirdpr.org.in/nird_docs/socialaudit/csa030718.pdf http://nirdpr.org.in/nird_docs/rss/socaudit-rs240420.pdf
2. Others reports put together by the Centre for Social Audit which is a government funded institution that does research and training on government led social audits in India: http://nirdpr.org.in/nird_docs/rss/socaudit-rs240420.pdf
3. Recent media pieces on concurrent social audits conducted during the pandemic: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/jharkhand-probe-into-nrega-work-throws-up-muck-6441524/
4. Citizen Oversight and India’s Right to Work Program: What Do the Social Auditors Say?: https://accountabilityresearch.org/publication/citizen-oversight-and-indias-right-to-work-program-what-do-the-social-auditors-say
5. Performance Audit of Social Audits Conducted by C&AG (download)
6. Analytical Brief of the Social Audit Reports from MGNREGA MIS

THEMATIC REVIEW OF SOCIAL AUDITS ACROSS THEMES (other than NREGA)

In order to deep dive into various forms of social audits as well as public audits across themes, we have started to put together a brief that provides insight into the status of social audit in different themes. We have tried to see if there is a legal mandate to conduct social audit, the role that civil society is currently playing in monitoring of schemes and policies, and key learning into the mechanics of these public oversight mechanisms that exist.

Click to access thematic-review-of-the-status-of-social-audit-sheet1-1.pdf

Please note that the brief is not exhaustive and is a WIP document. There maybe a lot more information that may be out there in the public domain. We have started this exercise to compile such resources to understand the spectrum of work being done by different organizations better and learn from them. Please feel free to reach out to us on saforum.india@gmail.com, in case you want to contribute/share about your work, learnings, or anything else that you may feel will add value to this brief and in turn to a much larger community of practitioners as well as academics.