Fellow Wikimedians,
As you all know, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore has sought
funding of about *1.8 Crores* through the FDC process from Wikimedia
Foundation to carry out work on seven local language projects in India that
includes Kannada, Telugu among others. [1]
The funds primarily cover the salaries of the people belonging to the
CIS-A2K team among other administrative expenses and other expenses as
outlined on their proposal page.
The proposal was up for Community review and comments until April 30th and
many have recorded their response about it [2]. Several community members
have come forward in pointing out that the staff salaries being paid and
that being proposed - are quite on the higher side (which is up to 2.4
Lakhs per month per person).
Apart from the concerns on extremely high salaries for Indian norms of the
team members of CIS-A2K team, there have been some serious concerns raised
about some apparent Conflict of Interest [3] and non-compliance with the
local laws (mainly Karnataka Societies act and the Foreign Contribution
Regulation Act).
However, looks like the proposal has moved forward through the FDC process
for funding despite the concerns raised and has gotten through to the next
stage.
More concerns have now been raised by several community members on the
Staff Assessment discussion page here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/…
I invite you to participate in the discussion and help steer this in the
right direction.
[1] -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_C…
[2] -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/…
[3] -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_J…
Thank you,
--
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.net
http://twitter.com/hpnadig
http://flickr.com/hpnadig