HARIT PRAYAS

A community monitored & audited project

India’s 1^st social audit[1] report of any development project

 (Of any development agency)

Social Audit is one of the innovative concept as well as approach in terms of strengthening the development projects. Its mainly a concept of auditing with participation of beneficiaries and the other stakeholders rather than being done by an individual stakeholder or a finical firm. It give a scope and space mainly for the beneficiaries to know the process, expenditure, work done and in relation the benefits reach received to them. In India till now the practice of social audit is mainly for the government programme like NREGP (National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme) and in recent past we have read and hear on NEWS a lot about the findings of social audit in NREGP and indeed in many places especially in Rajasthan ( with initiation from MKSS-Mazdoor Kiassan Shakti Sangathan) we have noticed a remarkable change in better implementation of NREGP.

Considering the importance of social audit for the development project , Caritas India along with its three partner has taken an initiative to generate the concept of social audit for the development projects supported by Caritas India and in this the first initiative has been taken with the HARIT PRAYAS project, where first of all community has trained on the social audit process and then later on community from 64 project villages of HARIT PRAYAS project ( in Bundelkhand region-Jhansi, Chatarpur and Sagar) has taken initiative to do the social audit of HARIT PRAYAS project .This is first time in India that community members along with other stake holders have done social audit of any development project being implemented by any development agency. It took almost 2 months for the community to evaluate the project in terms of expenditure, activities carried out and result/benefits (change) to the community from the project. The initiative of social audit has given a way in the Budelkhand region to make development programmes more strong in terms of reaching to the community and bringing out change in the system of implementation of development projects. On 17/12/2012 Caritas India Executive Director Most. Rev Fr. Frederick D’souza along with the Caritas India team has released the combined report of social audit of all 64 villages (in Hindi-mainly the compilation of reports from all the 64 HARIT PRAYAS projects villages) in New Delhi. He has thanked community, the partners and the Caritas India team who has involved in this type initiative to make programme more strong and look in to the prospect of value the programme from the community prospective on finance, implementation and results.  

You can read the process and key finding of social audit report in the attached summarised report (in English). India’s largest circulated Hindi daily news paper “Dainik Bhaskar” has covered it as a story of change in development sector and importance of  social audit of development project in bringing out the change in development sector.

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[1] Dainik Bhaskar, www.nrega.nic.in