(a) An independent and empowered social audit mechanism is an absolute must in every sphere of public service, including the judiciary, to ensure performance, accountability and ethical conduct. Elaborate. (b) "Integrity is a value that empowers the human being''. Justify with suitable illustration.

(a) Independent empowered social audit, including the judiciary

• Social audit is a public examination of a scheme or institution by the people who are affected, with documents, site facts and a hearing, not a closed departmental note.
• MKSS in Rajasthan and the social-audit architecture under MGNREGA showed that a wall of names and a jan sunwai can catch ghost works that an office audit missed.
• Independent means the auditor is not the implementing officer’s junior. Empowered means records must be given, findings must bind a response, and victimisation of a speaker is punished.
• In every public-service sphere: works, rations, hospitals, police lock-ups, schools, municipal contracts. Performance, money and courtesy are all auditable.
• CAG audit is essential and still different: it is expert and periodic. Social audit is local, frequent and owned by the user.
• Judiciary: independence of judges from the executive is a constitutional good. It is not a claim that courts are above every account of delay, opacity and conduct.
• What social audit of justice can mean: published disposal data, reasons for long vacancies, live streaming where the Supreme Court has allowed it, a usable complaints mechanism for corruption or sexual harassment, and audits of legal-aid quality — not a mob trial of a pending case.
• The in-camera and sub-judice limits remain. Empowered audit of courts is about systems and ethics of office, not about a panchayat overruling a judgment.
• Collegium opacity has been criticised even by judges; a more reasoned disclosure of appointments is a form of public account without destroying independence.
• Police and prisons need social audit with human-rights commissions, not only an internal inquiry that clears itself.
• Absolute must: without an independent ear, performance becomes a press release, accountability a circular, and ethical conduct a pledge on Integrity Day.
• Design: statutory social-audit units, protection under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014, and a time-bound Action Taken Report that is itself public.

(b) Integrity empowers the human being

• Integrity is the unity of word, belief and act. It looks like a chain; it is also a source of power.
• Inner power: the person does not spend energy on a second ledger, a cover story, or the fear of a forgotten lie. Socrates’ claim that a good person cannot be harmed in the soul is this point.
• Social power: others can trust a promise. A civil servant known not to sell a file can move a room without shouting, because the room believes the note.
• Gandhi’s satyagraha treated truth as strength against an empire. Integrity was the method, not a private ornament.
• Illustration: an engineer who records a pier crack and refuses a CM’s ribbon has less immediate patronage and more long-term authority — and the public still has a bridge.
• Illustration: a Vice Principal who will not bury a flying-squad catch can lose a promotion and still keep the power to look students in the face.
• Illustration: a company that recalls a bad lot instead of dumping it at home takes a profit hit and keeps the power to sell tomorrow.
• Lack of integrity disempowers: blackmail, sleeplessness, a subordinate who will not warn you, and a court date that owns your future.
• Integrity empowers only if institutions do not systematically punish it. Whistle-blower protection and a matrix that scores honesty are how the value becomes power for more than a martyr.
• Justification: integrity is not merely a brake. It is the capacity to act in public without shrinking from one’s own name.