Letting the people a scheme is meant to serve check whether it actually worked.
A social audit is a participatory process where the intended beneficiaries and the general public — not just government auditors — scrutinise the implementation of a government programme, comparing official records against ground reality (through public hearings, or "jan sunwais"), to check for discrepancies, misuse of funds, or non-delivery of promised benefits.
Social audits gained statutory backing through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, which mandates that every implementing agency conduct a social audit of its works. This was strengthened by the Audit of Schemes Rules, 2011, which required states to set up an independent Social Audit Unit (SAU), organisationally separate from the implementing department, to ensure the audit isn't compromised by those it's auditing.
Social audits complement formal financial audits (like those by the CAG) by adding a layer of direct, local accountability — since beneficiaries themselves can identify "ghost" workers, inflated muster rolls, or unfinished works that a paper-based financial audit might miss. The model, pioneered in MGNREGA, has since been extended in principle to other welfare schemes as a broader governance tool.
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