Social Audit

The objectives of social audit revolve around empowerment of the beneficiaries and directly affected stakeholders of the public sector programmes in matters of planning, implementation, delivery of services, appraisal, corruption and frauds, impact, etc.

Social audit provides close to complete transparency to the entire gamut of programme management and renders the impact sustainable. It enables the people to view the decision making process and criteria adopted for various elements of the programme.

While social audit has a crucial role in implementation of social sector programmes and even in ensuring corporate social responsibility, its objectives cannot in standalone mode, sustain the complete audit objective of any of the three basic types of auditing, viz. financial, compliance and performance audits

Social audit cannot be a substitute for the public audit by the SAIs but can be subsumed within one or more of them to enhance the quality of the audits by CAG of India.

Social Audit provides the strongest and irrefutable direct evidence for inputs, processes, financial and physical reporting, compliance, physical verification, assurance against misuse, fraud and misappropriation, and utilisation of resources and assets.

Social audits also provide a forum for strengthening the democratic process in governance and grievance redressal.

Social audit provides the most important link between oral and documentary evidence and offers a means of securing accountability of the managers of public sector programmes and renders the monitoring and appraisal mechanism multi‐perspective and transparent.