Four weeks into his new job as the watchdog for all government expenditure, Vinod Rai hopes to do away with the petty voucher raj this office has been notorious for and convert it into an organisation that audits the big bang government expenditure. Fresh from an inherited high-profile audit of the NREGS, Rai suggests this is perhaps only the first of such big picture pursuits for CAG auditors in the future. In his first interview to the media, Rai outlines his strategy to Gautam Chikermane. Excerpts:

• Let’s take the NREG report that coincided with your joining office. How exactly did the auditors discover something that the ministry has been saying is completely above board?

This is a case in which the government invited the auditors to do the study. Under normal circumstances we would have done this at a later stage. The government took a positive view saying that it would like to do mid-course corrections if corrections are required. Now, it is not that the government or those managing the schemes have only made mistakes. There are a large number of good points that have emerged. A large number of success stories have unfortunately been ignored, only the inadequacies have been discussed.

• So why the difference of opinion?

The only difference is that the government is not the executor all the way down. The central government allots the money, state government agencies implement the scheme. When the central government looks at it, it looks at it piecemeal. So do state governments. When audit did it, it did so holistically. And found the lacunae. And we’re not saying this is all malafide.

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