Social Audit
A Social Audit is a method of public accountability in which citizens collectively examine official records of public spending and works and verify them against physical reality, culminating in an open public hearing where discrepancies are confronted in front of officials. Forged by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in Rajasthan, India, in the 1990s and later embedded in law through India's national employment guarantee programme (MGNREGA), the social audit turns the right to information into a tool for exposing corruption and securing redress.
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Sources
- Centre for Good Governance (2005). Social Audit: A Toolkit - A Guide for Performance Improvement and Outcome Measurement. Hyderabad: Centre for Good Governance. link ↗
- Ringold, D., Holla, A., Koziol, M., & Srinivasan, S. (2012). Citizens and Service Delivery: Assessing the Use of Social Accountability Approaches in the Human Development Sectors. Washington, DC: World Bank. ISBN: 9780821389805
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Social Audit (Development Accountability). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/development-studies/social-audit-method
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
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