DailyPost 2597
INDIAN AUDIT – A WILD GOOSE CHASE!
If you are convinced that Indian audit in the governance sector is structured, predictable and impacting making, then you should be made the chief auditor of the country. That it will build one audit on the other for any activity or sector or will have one organization of its audit radar to find a meaning in its performance or the lack of it then you are badly mistaken. We have not heard of any good performances either on the financial administration of any organization front from the auditors. If there is any thought of vertical or horizontal extension of that audit depending on nature of results, then that too does it happen.
It means that depending on one audit findings encapsulated in the Audit report, does the audit agency decide to go ahead to conduct forensic audit or can it get permission to do that. Is there any provision of this nature? Given the nature of grave audit findings and the nature of financial mess we see in large sectors in maintenance of accounts, is it not warranted? This makes audit intensive and finality can be brought into it. On the horizontal extension side, if there are many audit findings of a similar nature in the same sector, activity or scheme, does it not require horizontal extension of it, to cleanse the sector / department once and for all?
That is not the case. It generally seems that the resources are thin and spread beyond what can lead to a reasonable impact. Besides the financial part, each of the sectors and their activities are so nuanced to make a great meaning out of it, but for some *financial discrepancies big or small, making projections, analysis and analytics which may or may not stick and comparisons which might or might not hold ground. The name of the game is that there is a fixed percentage of offices that are mandated to be audited every year.
Would it be done on rotation and in which manner also remains unknown to any office. How many years would be covered in any audit also remains unknown. Even the duration of stay of the audit team remains unknown and the broad parameters remains unknown to the audited party. Online digital audit still remains a far cry. Different audits with similar objectives logically should provide the same results but that is not the case. We don’t even have the consolation that once audit of the concerned organization or agency or office is done successfully, it does not have any financial issues for the financial period audited? We don’t even know whether the audit report will stand the test of investigation leave aside judicial scrutiny. How much of a difference have audits made in the setting right the financial mayhem this country is? Is it not a wild goose chase? It takes us nowhere.
NATIONAL AUDIT OF EVERY PENNY GOVERNMENT SPENDS IS A MUST.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.