Social Audting

Social auditing refers to the step that are taken to ensure that work done by the government is actually benefiting the people whom it is intended to benefit. It is based on the principle that the local governance should be carrying out as much as possible with the concept and in complete understanding of the requirements of the people concerned. It is a process not an event. Thus, social audit is a way of measuring,understanding,reporting and ultimately improving an organisation's social and ethical performance. It looks into the gap between performance and expectation. In a country like India, several programs and policies are launched for the benefit of the people. Some policies are meant to benefit only weaker sections of the society. To implement all such policies, funds are drawn from the state exchequer. The social control over withdrawal and usage of this fund called social fund.

It is a process in which details of the resources financial and non financial are used by public agencies and these are shared with the people often through a public platform. It allows people to enforce accountability and transparency and thereby providing ultimate user an opportunity to scrutinize the development initiatives. The main reason for the push for social audit is the huge disconnect between what the people need what the government thinks it needs and what has actually been done by the government. It narrows the gap between vision and reality and output and outcome. In this process,people work with the government to monitor ad evaluate the planning and implementation of scheme or programme or may be policy itself. It is a tool for evaluating how satisfactorily, an organisation has discharged its social responsibility. In other words, Social audit is reform tool aimed at strengthening accountability and transparency in the implementation of projects and policies.

With the change in paradigms of governance there has also been a change in our notion of accountability. As per modern stake holder's notion of accountability, governmental agencies are responsible for maintaining not only procedural integrity but also for various other purposes such as performance,efficiency,effectiveness,value for money,etc.