Union DONER Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday said Centre will ask all the eight North Eastern states to do ‘social audit’ of all the DoNER projects implemented in the North East.
Talking to Media persons in Shillong, the Union Minister for DoNER said that the Ministry will not only look at utilisation certificates and completion certificates for projects but also make sure that all the eight states of North East do the social audit.
“In the DoNER Ministry, now we have put together in the last two, three weeks, we have put together consulting all our people that we will not look at only utilisation certificates and completion certificates for projects, we will try and make sure that all our states also do a social audit,” Scindia said.
Stating the importance of looking at outcome instead of just the outlay, the Minister said, “I don’t think it’s important to necessarily look at whether it is you who’s going to be the funnel, but it’s necessarily to not look at only process, but also to look at outcome not necessary to look at only outlays, but look at the outcome.”
He said the aim is to reach to a common end goal of development and progress as enshrined by the Prime Minister in his insistence of ensuring that Viksit means a viksit Northeast
While giving an example he said, “If a hospital has been put up or for example, if a school has been put up that’s brick and mortar but brick and mortar alone has no value unless there is a soul inside the brick and Mortar. So hospitals must have doctors, a hospital must have nurses, a school must have teachers because that is the real Soul and therefore not only a UC and a CC but also a social audit as to how many patients have been treated in hospital. How many students have been taught in a school? That is very monumentally important in our path of progress as we go forward.”
Scindia said that his attempt is to bring a new dimension to the way to have partnership with all the North Eastern states.