Lack of public financial awareness and participation worrisome
Mokokchung Times Feature
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) audits the government’s receipts and expenditure including the entities that are funded by the government. The CAG report of a State’s governance is submitted to the Governor of the State, who tables it in front of the state legislature through the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). PAC is one of the parliamentary committees that examine the annual audit reports of CAG and bring out cases of waste, loss, corruption, extravagance, inefficiency, and nugatory expenses.
In the budget session of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly, CAG highlighted the shocking misappropriation of Rs 207 crore under various departments during FY 2019-20. The report said that 26 cases of misappropriation of funds were found. Nagaland School Education Department established the highest misappropriation of funds amounting to 82.79 crore rupees. Further, as per the report, an amount of Rs 25.28 crore siphoned off in the Power Department awaits departmental and criminal investigation.
The CAG has asked the departments concerned and the government to submit a suo motu explanatory note on the audit reports along with the action taken or proposed “within one month” of placing the report in the assembly, and asked the respective bodies to not wait for the notice or call from the PAC.
Previous year, the CAG report tabled for FY 2018-19 witnessed another disclosure on the state’s health department spending of a mere 0.58% of the total revenue on drugs/medicines indicating shortage of drugs in health centers across the state.
In the same year, CAG called out the government for ‘ghost employees’ and for violating provisions under the Central Treasury Rules (CTR) for withdrawing money fraudulently and submitting fake treasury challans to mislead audit. The CAG has also observed delays, lack of monitoring, and quality control and safety measures in PWD.
The CAG is not a judge of government policies but it is the most critical player in making relevant information available and it is through them that accountability of the government and other public authorities who spend public funds are ensured.
However, over the years, it has been found that barely any action or penalty is initiated against those defaulting officers or departments. The attempt to prevent such actions in the future is by holding those defaulters accountable through strict actions and penalties, which are completely missing.
PAC is the committee that can enforce accountability and financial discipline while recommending further course of action on defaulting officers and departments. But, actionstaken as a deterrent are yet to be seen. Perhaps, the PAC is too lenient on such enforcement.
Formally, as long as the public stay aware and participate in holding the defaulters accountable, swift and strict actions will be witnessed through due democratic processes. However, the lack of public’s awareness and participation shuns all room for hope. The nonchalant attitude expressed by the general public towards investigative reports is not only worrisome but a sad commentary on our existing opposition-less democracy.
It is expected of a democracy that their citizens be more concerned about their rights, their freedom and how their money is utilized or burrowed. The citizens are expected to assess the governance of their government and use mechanisms to hold the government’s flawed institutions accountable. And, therefore, constitutionally, every citizen is expected to display concern and seriousness on reports such as CAG because it concerns their government, their money and their well-being.
The educated section of the society must reinforce and demand for mechanisms to hold the wrong doers accountable for it serves everyone’s interest. The paramount need is to democratize financial knowledge and awareness through public discourse in an open and free platform and urge the government to bring about more transparency by adopting measures such as effective digital governance and strengthening acts like Lokayukta.
It is also the responsibility of the citizen to preserve CAG as an independent institutional watchdog and not treat it as one whose report must be read and buried. On failing to do so, the entire concept of wheel of accountability, as stated by the constitution, would no longer exist. And before we know it, the government we once looked at as democratic would have turned into a tyrannical regime.