The significance of social audit for social sector programmes can be understood from the following points:

♤ Enhances reputation: Social Auditing helps the legislature and executive in identifying the problem areas and provides an opportunity to take a proactive stance and create solutions.

♤ Alerts policymakers to stakeholder trends: Social Auditing is a tool that helps managers

understand and anticipate stakeholder’s concerns.

♤ Affects positive organisational change: Social Auditing identifies specific organisational improvement goals and highlights progress on their implementation and completeness.

♤ Increases accountability: There is a strong emphasis on openness and accountability for government departments. Social Auditing uses external verification to validate that the Social Audit is inclusive and complete. This leads to reduction in wastages and corruption.

♤ Assists in re-orienting and re-focusing priorities: Social Auditing could be a useful tool to help departments reshape their priorities in tune with people's expectations.

♤ Provides increased confidence in social areas: Social Audit can enable departments/ institutions to act with greater confidence in social areas that have been neglected in the past or have been given a lower priority.

In recent years due to the steady shift in devolution of funds and functions to the local government, the demand for social audit has grown. In flagship schemes such as MGNREGA, the Union Government is promoting social audit to check corruption.

Similarly, various state governments such as Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh have taken the initiative to incorporate social audit as part of their monitoring systems through Gram Sabhas and in partnership with a consortium of NGOs.