Social Audit in Post Statutory CSR Era

Dr D. Mukhopadhyay
Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 makes provisions for mandatory discharge of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)  by the corporates and Schedule VII to the Companies Act, 2013 contains the   prescribed  CSR activities and initiatives for undertaking  and accordingly  every company  having net worth of Rs. 500 crores or more, or turnover of Rs. 1,000 cores or more or net profit of Rs. 5 crores or more during  any of  three preceding  financial years shall constitute  a CSR Committee consisting of  three or more directors of the concerned company. The CSR Committee shall  formulate and recommend  to the Board of Directors a CSR policy  prescribing the CSR activities to be undertaken by the companies within the purview of  the Schedule VII to the Companies Act, 2013.  The Board shall approve  the CSR policy and ensure that CSR activities are undertaken and at least  two percent of the average net profits made during the  immediately  preceding  three financial years  is spent  by the company concerned.  Here net profit denotes profit before tax. Schedule VII to the Companies Act, 2013 provides   broad categories of CSR activities and initiatives relating to  eradication of poverty, sanitation and healthcare , education, removal of gender inequality, maintenance of ecological balance , protection and preservation of arts and national heritage, culture, rural development and so on so forth and the amount spent on any of these activities shall qualify to be the expenditure  committed for the purposes of  CSR  activities  within the meaning of the  Schedule VII to the Companies Act, 2013. It is therefore necessary  and imperative to ensure  that benefits of such social projects  must reach to the beneficiaries  and the same should be examined by  certain professionally qualified experts and the said relevance comes under the ambit of Social Audit.
Social Audit’s scope covers a broad spectrum as it aims at examining the performance  of a programme spelt out   within the ambit of CSR. In India, the concept of Social Audit is by and large  in  vogue in the form of Statutory Cost Audit under Section 148 of the Companies Act, 2013 and it covers the cases of   large projects and public works of the Government  and  the responsibility to conduct  Statutory Cost Audit  has exclusively been  entrusted  to  CMAs by Government of India . It is imperative to ascertain  the gap if any between  the need of the people and the actual benefits that are  extended by the  projects mentioned above. In this context, mention may be made   of  the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 for which Social Audit is conducted and it  is the tool for ascertaining the effectiveness of the MGNREGA. CSR is a philosophy  whereby  the corporates take into consideration the welfare  of the society as well as protection of environment  and maintaining  ecological balance. Quite a substantial amount of financial resource  outgoes for  different projects  undertaken under the canvas of the CSR initiatives  and it is thus rational  for adopting  social audit  as a tool for managing those  CSR projects.
The first and foremost  responsibility of the corporates  is  to earn profit from the business  as advocated by  Milton Friedman , Nobel Laureate in Economics , and   besides this,   it is the responsibility of the business  to take care of the society   with which it has a symbiotic association. Corporates draw the necessary resources from the society and in turn the society expects  of the corporates  something in return    i.e. quid pro quo  in the form of social projects.  It is therefore a time honoured need to ascertain how the CSR activities  bring about changes  in the way of  living of the community at large and specifically  speaking  it is to see whether the benefits  of CSR expenditure reach to the downtrodden, disadvantaged  and socially as well as  economically  deprived  masses and  Social Audit  is the most effective weapon in the hands of the  regulators. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development  gives a meaningful definition of CSR and according to it,” CSR is the continuing commitment  by the business  to contribute  to economic  development while improving the quality of life  of the workforce  and their families  as well as  the community and society at large” while Social Audit is a process  by which  the beneficiaries of any project, schemes, policy are empowered to  audit such programmes, projects, schemes etc through some  of the experts in the field of  Accountancy. Social Audit is an ongoing process  by which  stakeholders of a project  are involved  from the planning  to the monitoring  and evaluation of that project.
It is therefore necessary  to take the help of Social Audit  in order to ascertain  that CSR expenditure  is committed  for achieving  purposive objectives. The  functional domain of Social Audit  is multi-perspective, comprehensive and multi-directional. Social Audit ensures fairness   by examining the degree of the accountability and transparency of the social transactions  being the results of  commitment of  social cost  by the corporates. In order to make the CSR effective, Social Audit is an indispensible approach for ensuring check and balance . In simplicity,  Social Audit reports  how well the concerned  firms  have performed  in  fulfilling the needs of the  targeted beneficiaries under a given CSR initiative. It also makes out  the improvement required  if any  and increase the effectiveness  of the concerned  CSR initiative undertaken  by the corporate community. In order to make CSR programmes  or projects  successful, Social Audit is a must since  Social Audit is critical examination of an organization’s investment in CSR projects. It authenticates  efficient  utilization of  grants, degree of  transparency and fairness , timely completion or  cost overrun  and accounting thereof   besides statutory compliance.
CSR to be efficient and effective needs to be  evaluated with reference to effectiveness of implementation of the   CSR projects , adequacy of internal control and internal check etc. The Social Auditor must have the expert knowledge  about project management and knowledge in accounting  and expert knowledge  in the domain of  Corporate Law, Income Tax Law, Law of Contract, Environmental Laws and various Labour Laws. It is therefore recommended that  that Social Auditor  should essentially be  CAs/CMAs. It may be mentioned that  Social Audit   enables  an organization to assess the degree of efficient utilization of resources. It measures and evaluates  to extent to which a corporate lives up to the agreed  common social objectives. India is a welfare State  and in the relevance and context of Welfare State, Social Audit  is of high relevance  in order to  evaluate the degree  of democratic governance  and    an instrument  to curb corruption  in the process of commitment  of CSR expenditure projects.  There is involvement of spending  of huge  amount  on various social activities  and  Social Audit is a prominent tool  for reporting  the transparency  and progress  of a particular project.
Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has released  information on the total committed CSR expenditure  during Financial Year 2014-2015 which amounts to  Rs. 8,802.90 crores and total number of  companies that  incurred such expenditure is 7,334. Again according to  information released by the MCA, a total of Rs. 6,338  crores  were spent by 51 Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and 409 private companies.  51 PSUs spent  Rs. 2,387 crores  while 409 private companies spent Rs. 3,951 crores.  In the context of managing the CSR projects under CSR initiatives  in India, Social Audit practices  should be encouraged  in order to ensure better project management. It has been mentioned  elsewhere that Cost Audit   is of higher  degree of social relevance  in the form of efficiency or management audit and  Social Audit  may be given due status in the line of Statutory Cost Audit. Under CSR initiative, Social Audit  Report  may be used as an effective aid in the process of decision making  by the management.  The corporates are responsible  to the  consumers, employees, shareholders and the community  at large but Social Audit  is practiced in India in a very insignificant way. No company other than TISCO so far has come forward  to introduce Social Audit. Social Audit  can  evaluate  and examine  the extent to which a corporate entity has  fulfilled its social and moral obligations. It is  the need of the hour   for the regulators and decision makers   to legislate necessary legal provisions  for Statutory Social Audit in the line of Statutory Financial Audit and Statutory Cost Audit  by the Qualified  Accountants  in order to ensure  the accomplishment  of the objectives of CSR under Schedule VII to the Companies Act, 2013. India is the only country in the world when CSR is mandatory and thus audit of CSR funded  projects in the form of Social Audit is essential  in the Post Statutory CSR  Era in India.
(The author is Professor of Management, School of Business and Dean Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, Jammu & Kashmir)
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