NEW DELHI, 7 April 2008 — The Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) may fail to reap the anticipated results from a slew of developmental schemes unless their implementation undergoes social auditing, warn activists.
“We want to reap the best harvest from the government’s development programs like NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) before we go to the next Lok Sabha poll,” Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Veerappa Moily told IANS in an interview.
But activists say independent social auditing of the scheme is the key to its proper implementation. Given the present state of poor implementation, the NREGS is not living up to its expectations of a voter-friendly scheme, they warn.
Corruption, lack of manpower and little awareness among the people about the scheme are the main irritants. A social audit by an independent agency is expected to check corruption and ensure the proper distribution of jobs.
The government ordered implementation of the NREGS in all the 604 districts of India from April 1. A sum of 16 billion rupees has been earmarked for the scheme in the current budget.
“The government should encourage social audit, that is, audit by the local people. Participatory evaluation is better than involving external agencies. What do they know about the local problems?” asked Aruna Roy of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an NGO working in Rajasthan.
Roy, a Magsaysay award winner, has been working closely with the people on the NREGS.
The UPA government is hoping that its slew of programs and legislation like the NREGS, the National Rural Health Mission and the Right to Information Act will translate into votes in the 2009 general election. But the NREGS, in particular, has been faulted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for its poor implementation in most states.
The debate for external auditing began after the CAG made the report public. The report underlined discrepancies in the implementation of the NREGS, the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission and other flagship programs of the UPA.
Acting on the report, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered exploring of options to get the schemes audited by external agencies in order to bring transparency.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, in his budget speech, said independent research institutions would execute the auditing. The government will soon have in place a central plan schemes monitoring system, sources said.
The move has been welcomed by NGOs. But they want only Indian institutions like IIMs and universities to be roped in and international agencies kept out. “They (foreign agencies) will charge huge amounts for a job that can be done better by the Indian agencies,” said Nikhil De, also of MKSS.
Some within the activist fraternity are even apprehensive of involving Indian institutions on the grounds that they are not familiar with rural India.
