Hi

Vickram, there seems to be a false assumption on your part that is
underpinning most of your logic. Allow me to clarify. The funding is not
new, it is not entering India now, in fact if I had to make an educated
guess I would say the spending is an eighth or a sixth of what it was the
last year and the year before. Money hasn't been diverted now, it was for
the last 2-3 years, it has just been reduced to a fraction of what it was.
Second, CIS has other benefactors and other priorities. There seems to be
some link that was formed a while ago between them and the foundation. CIS
might have the financial approvals in place to process the grant, but they
are not being used to transfer to the organic entity in India but create an
alternative to them. There is also no problem in getting those financial
approvals for the chapter itself, it was a decision made a while ago to
support CIS instead - I don't believe the chapter was a party to it.
Working together would be CIS supporting the chapter, not continuing to
employ and hire people on the other side of the country, for a community
they know little about.

Ashwin, you're a mensch. I appreciate your attempts at levity here, but
these questions haven't been asked for a while. Hisham left almost 7-8
months ago, the hiring has been delayed for a few months, then the entire
game of charades with the new hire. I'm lead to deduce that CIS wasn't
itself thrilled with the prospect of getting involved to this level, I
believe they used an intern for the majority of correspondence to this
list. All the while a team remained employed with no one to oversee them,
no direction. I don't recall if any of them worked with any community
members in the last year on anything substantial. If I'm wrong then please
tell me you've been working with them in Pune or Mumbai, I heard things to
the contrary and occasionally saw low impact, low visibility undertakings.

However, I see someone being accused of trolling for asking these
questions, someone else of getting defensive. There isn't any
clarification, no answer - just that these questions shouldn't be asked.
These aren't necessarily questions directed at Dr. Niranjana or Vishnu, or
even CIS alone, they might be more suited to inquiring how the whole
situation came to be.

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 6:37 AM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhada...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
> And to all on this list: can we please give the new A2K team the space,
> the good faith, and the openness so they can start to do what they need to
> do without feeling like people are nipping at their heels?
>

The team has been there for over an year now, I think hisham left 7-8
months. If anything I really don't know what half of them have been doing,
or who is on the team these days. It sounded like any other gov. babu job.


> Can we please put the politics, suspicions, and judgements aside and give
> them a break? This atmosphere seems the very opposite of a welcome.
>

I seem to recall you being adapt at politics yourself, ma'am. I've heard
about a lot of things being said to the board. Perhaps, you can talk more
about me or the Indian community to the board and staff on another
occasion, and then ask to put aside politics on an open mailing list.


> Can we please give them a level playing field?


Does that mean turning a blind eye to nepotism, favoritism and undisclosed
conflicts of interest? They are getting more and more common I see. But
sure, a level playing field - for people in places of power and authority.

-Theo
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