My blog post on social audits as change agents has attracted more engagement than I would have expected. Some of it has been through conversation but a substantive part has also been in writing. Keshav Desiraju, a senior IAS officer writes:
You have raised several issues.
1. Everything depends on how social audit is institutionalized. If the intention behind social audit is to bypass the political system, it is not going to work. No political system will allow a “people’s initiative” that has been pushed as a more credible, more honest, alternative to itself. A public audit will need to be based either in the established political system (MLAs, Assembly, Assembly Questions, Calling Attention Motions, etc.) or in the PRIs, both of which have legal sanction.
2. In any case, we cannot presume that NGOs are better motivated or better trained or are better poised to be the voice from the grassroots than the peoples’ representatives or the PRIs. The record of NGOs (Orissa, Andhra, Manipur) is patchy.
3. Of course, there is the very salutary example in Rajasthan where, as you note, it is something of a movement. This is crucial. It is not simply committees, or NGOs or whatever, but a movement, driven by highly charismatic leaders.
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While international development practitioners debate and discuss the best tool for people’s monitoring, the Indian government takes a page out of the book of the Right to Livelihood and Right to Food movements and of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and institutionalizes social audits by mandating them in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The onus is now on the state to ensure that its own performance is monitored and evaluated by the people. The implementation of these bi-annual audits has been patchy; states differ in their strategy of “rolling them out”. While Andhra Pradesh has established a large state machinery that facilitates social audits, Orissa has decided to appoint the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) as the coordinator. In Rajasthan, the seminal work of MKSS has made people’s monitoring and social audits into something of a movement. Other states have left it to NGOs. Still other states have taken minimalist steps. At some level, the relationship between social audits and the state reflects the relationship between grassroots NGOs and the government. State governments have thus variously circumvented NGOs, replaced them, co-opted them or ignored them in the conduct of social audits.
Once the favorite citation for neo-Malthusians predicting a demographic catastrophe, Bangladesh actually halved its fertility rates between 1971 and 2004. Today, girls’ secondary school attendance exceeds that of boys. The gender gap in infant mortality has been closed. In each of these areas, India and Pakistan pale in comparison, as they do in the area of sanitation, immunization and diarrhea control. The micro-credit revolution continues to boost women’s solidarity groups and earning potential. And vast numbers of young women leave their villages to work in garment factories in a culture where ostensibly purdah had kept them from moving out of the house. |
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Mariam Claeson
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