In an era of heightened expectations and declaration of commitment of delivery from almost all quarters of governance, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has upped the ante by planning carry out thematic audit on 53 different topics besides performance audit on more than 35 subjects. The move has sparked attention as the government auditor usually troubles itself with merely 30-35 such audits in a given financial year.
Moving from the Defence Ministry to the CAG, Shashi Kant Sharma seems to be having his obvious inclinations to take upon the scrutiny of Development of Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas), construction of indigenous aircraft carrier besides the integrated audit of ministry of new and renewable energy among others. In addition, the CAG has also planned to do social audit of mid-day meal, total sanitation campaign and tribal sub plan among others.
The performance and thematic audits of central government’s plans involves citizens, NGOs, academic institutions and others to get the ground report.
The move seems to be a conscious attempt to move away from the traditional compliance or financial audits towards more of an objective & outcome based audit. Performance and thematic audit intends to takes a holistic view to check whether government programmes have achieved the desired outcomes. Such audit reports not only hold government financially accountable but also indicate overall performance of the government.
Officials in the department as usual feel that an over-ambitious target has been set out and the CAG might have to carry forward some of the work to next financial year. However, others who feel like falling in line with the renewed sentiment of hard work think that it’s quite manageable as a large number of trained personnel have been recruited to expand the capacity of the Supreme Auditor.
Engineering Watch would like to take this opportunity to propose the involvement of the vast pool of techno-managerial manpower spread across the 400 odd districts of the country who can be given a chance to touch base with the developmental landscape of the country and invoke a heightened sentiment towards participatory accountable governance.
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