Social audits of midday meal scheme soon

Decision comes a year after over 20 students die in Bihar school

After the rural job guarantee scheme, it is now turn of the central government’s midday meal programme to face social audit.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has identified nine states including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to start with. Bihar, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha are the other states, marked for public scrutiny of the scheme.

The proposed audit will be conducted at two “poor performing” districts of each of these nine states. One of the two districts will be identified by the Centre while another will be done by the state government concerned.

At least 20 schools would be covered in each district. Social auditors will be identified from amongst the parents of children studying in the schools as well as members of the school management committee. 

“The governments of these states have already been asked by the ministry to facilitate conduct of social audit of the mid-may meal scheme during 2014-15,” sources told Deccan Herald.

The decision comes a year after the Bihar mid-day meal tragedy which saw death of over 20 children due to contaminated food at a school in Chapra district. After the incident in July 2013, the ministry suggested all the states to conduct social audit of the scheme, apart from taking other measures to strengthen monitoring.

This, however, received a cold response from most of the states. A proposal was made for conducting social audit in two districts of Karnataka last year but this too could not take off.

According to guidelines issued to states, a public hearing will be held at the gram panchayat level or at the cluster level as a culmination of the social audit process. A the public hearing, the school wise audit findings will be read out and officials concerned will have to answer in public for lapses.

“The officials concerned will have to be present at hearing and give clarifications or explanations in public as to why a certain action was taken or not taken,” sources said, adding senior officials will fix responsibility on each of the findings of the audit exercise in cases of gaps, lapses, or deviations and take immediate corrective or disciplinary actions.

The social audit will be conducted on the lines of the one held as a pilot study at Chittoor and Khammam districts of Andhra Pradesh in March 2013. “The ministry wants these states to conduct social audit on the lines of the one held in Andhra Pradesh last years because the outcomes of this exercise were very useful for enhancing the effectiveness of the scheme,” sources said.

In Andhra Pradesh, the audit was conducted with the help of Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency, Hyderabad. “All the nine state governments have also been asked to involve a reputed institute to conduct social audit. These institutes will function as nodal agencies. Some of the states like Tamil Nadu and Odisha have already identified institutes to be engaged in the exercise while others are in process,” sources said.