In today’s world, it is difficult to commit bungling at any level, but still, certain Government offices don’t want to follow the set procedures. The Rural Development Department is one such department where, despite clear-cut instructions that social audits and subsequent recoveries are mandatory, the staff is least bothered about compliance. Using technology, GoI has put in numerous checks and balances to counter any ghost work being done. Geo-coordinate-tagged photographs are a must to get bills cleared. There are always efforts to check the work done on the ground, and one such check is a social audit. Under audit, the work on the ground is being cross-checked with the bills raised. This is a specific example of the MGNREGA scheme, which is intended for the poor to provide them with a minimum number of days of work to sustain themselves. An astonishing social audit of around seventeen hundred panchayats was done in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019-20; as many as 352 cases of fraudulent works were reported, and a recovery of around sixty lakhs was recommended, but to date, no action has been taken. The importance of both the social audit and subsequent actions has been undermined. Sensing the seriousness of the issue, the Commissioner/ Secretary to the Government, Department of Rural Development, has rightly directed to recover the said amount, and the respective officers in charge are responsible for recoveries. It is a serious matter that in the Rural Development Department, which is the backbone of Government-sponsored development schemes, such malpractices are going on despite checks and balances. All carrots and no sticks don’t work in such cases.
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