Accountability of public officials, both elected representatives and appointed officials is the hallmark of democratic governance. They are all answerable to the people for their policies, decisions, actions, and use of public money. Social Audit is a useful instrument to ensure public accountability and to build a transparent, responsive, accountable, and deliverable government. Social Audit ensures a high level of development outcome and facilitates community participation in governance. Social Audit provide an opportunity for public scrutiny of the expenditure incurred by government departments and various implementing agencies and verify its efficiency, effectiveness and usefulness. 

The democratic decentralization and the people’s planning campaign successfully implemented in Kerala during the Ninth Five Year initiated innovative efforts for strengthening the social accountability of local governments in development planning. New systems and procedures for social accountability, such as community participation, transparency, inclusiveness, etc have been innovated in Kerala as part of decentralized participatory planning. There was an in-built mechanism for participatory monitoring and evaluation as part of local development projects implemented by local governments. There were few initiatives on the part of some Grama Panchayats and Block Panchayats for conducting social audit of their local development plans during the People’s Planning Campaign on an experimental basis. Getting lessons from these initiatives, some line departments of the state government, such as the treasury department, sales tax and commercial tax department have conducted social audits and produced significant improvements in their performance and delivery of services. 

For the first time in the history of India, the MGNREG Act provided mandatory provisions for the conduct of Social Audit in 2005 and entrusted Grama Sabhas as the institutional system for the same. In fact, the knowledge base and learning opportunities of democratic decentralization and participatory planning in Kerala have significantly influenced the crafting of the MGNREG Act and its operational guidelines and made them more community-centric. The MGNREG Act empowered Grama Sabhas as an institutional system for community scrutiny to plan, implement and evaluate all works carried out by the Panchayats. Section 17 in the MGNREG Act insists to conduct Social Audit of all the projects implemented and verifying the utilization of funds by the Grama Sabhas. The Social Audit also provides an opportunity for the community to verify the usefulness of the public funds as part of the MGNREGA and proactive efforts of the Panchayats to protect the entitlements of workers guaranteed by the Act. 

The Social Audit Unit (SAU) Kerala has been established vide order GO (RT.) No. 3906/ 2015/LSGD Dated, Thiruvananthapuram, 30-12-2015 of the Principal Secretary, Local Self Government Department, Government of Kerala to conduct social audit of MGNREGA works implemented by the Panchayats and other flagship development programmes of the Central and State Governments. The SAU Kerala started functioning only in 2018 and registered as an independent Society under the Travancore-Cochin Charitable Societies Act, 1955 vide No. TVM/TC/123/2017 on 31st January 2017 namely Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Social Audit Society Kerala (MGNSASK). There was some delay in setting up the SAU Kerala and to make it functional in the initial years of its existence and the social audit functioning started only in FY 2019-20. The Covid -19 pandemic again disrupted social mobilization and other social audit activities in the state for the next two years. 

The conduct of systematic and regular Social Audit of MGNREGA in Kerala has been started at the end of the FY 2021-22. During the last one and half years the SAU has achieved significant progress in the extent and coverage of social audit of MGNREGA works. Kerala is one of the very few states in India which conduct social audit of all MGNREGA works in every six months as stipulated in the Audit of Scheme Rules 2011 prepared by the CAG, Government of India for conducting social audit. In the FY 2022-23, the SAU Kerala has achieved comprehensive coverage of the MGNREGA Social Audit. A total of 15,692 social audit Grama Sabhas and 941 Public Hearings at the Grama Panchayat level were organized for social audit in the state. Sri. Pinarayi Vijayan, Hon. Chief Minister of Kerala has declared cent percent coverage of Social Audit of MGNREGA works in an auspicious function organized at Ernakulam on 10th April 2023. In this function, he has emphatically declared the commitment of the Government of Kerala to extend social accountability in all development programmes of local governments and to strengthen the institutional system of social audit in Kerala. This policy declaration of the Hon. Chief Minister of Kerala endowed new responsibilities and endeavors to the SAU Kerala and gave new insights for its future functioning.