“We may not be able to wipe out corruption, but our endeavour is to uncover instances of crony capitalism. Government should be seen to support enterprise per se and not particular entrepreneurs,” he said in a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School here.
Rai, who was been criticised by the Indian government for reports on various scams like in telecom, coal etc., said adding the role of a public auditor cannot be confined to merely placing its report in Parliament.
He said, “Should we as public auditors limit our role to placing reports in Parliament or go beyond that and seek to sensitise public opinion on our audit observations especially so in social sector audits such as rural health, primary education, water pollution, environment, drinking water, etc.”
On the issue of the CAG exceeding its mandate, Rai observed that since the Indian democracy is maturing and the urban middle class is becoming more involved in citizen’s affairs, “we continue to tread the new path in the belief that the final stakeholder is the public at large.”
Maintaining that the auditing of government and public entities has a positive impact on trust in society, Rai said, “It focuses the minds of the custodians of the public purse to use resources effectively, as they know that after audit scrutiny, the public will be aware of their actions.”